Quote of the Day
Copyright © 1996, 1997 Lonnie Foster


To read this file, open it in Notepad and stretch the window horizontally
until you can see all the text.

Quote of the Day is available for download from:

    http://www.pobox.com/~tribble/useless.html


WHAT (is this silly thing, anyway)?
-----------------------------------

Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a small program to display a random quote every 
time it is run.  It is similar to "fortune cookie" programs popular on Unix
systems.


HOW (do I install it)?
----------------------

1.  Unzip the files into a temporary directory.
2.  Run setup.exe.
3.  Follow the instructions in the setup program.  Once it is finished, you may
    delete the files from the temporary directory.


HOW (do I use it)?
------------------

There's not much to this program, really.  When started, QOTD displays a 
random quote from its database.  The arrow buttons ("<" and ">") may be used 
to cycle through the database if you just want to browse the quotes.

If you'd like QOTD to run when you start Windows 95, make a shortcut to it in 
your Startup folder.


WHY (did Lonnie waste so much time on this)?
--------------------------------------------

I made QOTD because I wanted a decent program to display cute quotes and quips 
when starting up Windows 95.  This program really has its roots in any number 
of "fortune cookie" programs for a number of different platforms.

I also wanted to get some practice with Visual Basic programming, and this 
seemed like a simple project to tackle.


WHO CARES (about all the technical details)?
--------------------------------------------

The QOTD database (quotes.mdb) is a standard Access 7.0 database file.  If 
you've got Access 95, feel free to add your own quotes to quotes.mdb (or use 
it for your own evil purposes - QOTD can display just about anything you drop 
into the database file, as long as you don't change the design of the Quotes 
table in quotes.mdb).  I have provided an entry form, also cleverly named 
Quotes, to facilitate ease of input for new quotes.  The Quote field is a Memo 
field, so it can hold a lot of text.  Note that QOTD's display window doesn't 
resize, though, so if you write any books to the Quote field, the quote will 
likely disappear off the bottom edge of the window.

The quotes were gathered from various sources on the net, and, where possible, 
I have included appropriate attributions to the author of each quote.  If you 
find that I'm in error about who said something, it's probably because the 
tagline or cookie fortune or whatever that I got the quote from was in error. 
 If it really annoys you that I've got something wrong, feel free to send me 
email correcting my horrible transgression; my address is on the About page.

I plan to add more quotes to the database as I find them, and I'll post 
updated versions of the quotes.mdb file to the net as they become available.  
If you've put a lot of effort into assembling new quotes for the quotes.mdb 
file, let me know; I'd love to incorporate them into future versions.

Visual Basic 5 source code is available in the source.zip archive included in
the Quote of the Day distribution.  If you want to play with the code, be sure
to make a copy of the quotes.mdb file and put it in the same directory with
the source files, or VB won't be able to find the database when it's trying to
run in the design environment.


Copyleft
--------


    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.  See the file LICENSE.TXT for
    details.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

    The author of this program (Lonnie Foster) may be contacted by email at
    the following address:

        lonnief@pobox.com
