Uncle Carl's Famous Alert Box Maker V.1.01 (C) Carl J. Hafner 12/30/93 DISCLAIMER ---------- The author cannot be responsible for ANY damage to your equipment, other software or hardware products, or physical or mental well being caused by the use, misuse, abuse or inability to use this program. The author also makes no guarantee as to the compatibility of this program with other software or hardware products. By using this program you are stating that you completely understand AND agree with these terms AND agree to accept FULL responsibility for ANY and ALL events arising from its implementation. If you do NOT understand AND agree, do NOT use this program ! DISTRIBUTION ------------ You ARE free to copy and distribute this program as long as the files UNCALERT.PRG ... the program. UALERT11.TXT ... this text file. UNCALERT.CUR ... a custom mouse cursor. NEWTERMS.TXT ... current terms of registration. OTHERTTL.TXT ... current titles. are included, are NOT modified in ANY way and NO FEE of ANY type is incurred upon the recipient for the files _themselves_. USAGE ----- UncleAlert runs as both a program and an accessory, depending on where you keep it and how you name it. SELECTING AN ICON ----------------- Click on an icon (blank, exclamation mark, question mark, stop sign) with the LEFT mouse button to select it as the icon which will appear in the alert box. Selecting the far left "blank icon" means that NO ICON will appear in the alert box. ENTERING TEXT ------------- Use the up and down arrow keys to move from one text line to another. Once on the desired line, simply type in the text you desire. This is the text message which will appear in your alert box. ALERT BOX BUTTONS ----------------- Below the 5 lines on which you just entered your message are 4 additional lines. If you wish to have just one button within your alert, enter your button text on either the 1st OR 4th line. The 4th line can ONLY be used alone ! This line allows you to have a button with up to 30 characters of text. If you wish to have 2 buttons within your alert, enter text on the 1st and 2nd button lines. If you wish to have 3 buttons within your alert, enter text on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd button lines. "Selecting" a button line makes that the default alert button (the button which responds to the [RETURN] key). FORMDOIT! --------- If you are using Gribnif Software's "FormDoIt!" you will only be allowed to View/Test the first ten characters in the "Big Button". FormDoIt! trims buttons over 10 characters wide. The text for the "big button" will STILL be saved and the big button will STILL work, but only when FormDoIt! is is disabled. I have no idea why FormDoIt! adds this restriction to alert boxes. BTW: FormDoIt! will do this to ALL GEM alert boxes created with ANY program, not just UncleAlert. To temporarily disable FormDoIt!, simply press SHIFT-SHIFT-DELETE . Press the same keys to re-enable it. SAVING ------ When you are happy, click on the "SAVE" button. A fileselector will appear allowing you to save a GFA .LST file containing the source code for the alert box. This code can then be merged into your GFA source code. LOADING ------- Clicking on the LOAD button calls up a fileselector for LOADing any alert .LST files created with UncleAlert. DO NOT try to load ANY files which have been altered by anything other than UncleAlert or the program will crash ! TESTING ------- Click on the TEST button to see what the alert will look like. QUITTING -------- Click on "EXIT" to exit the program. MOVING THE PANEL ON THE SCREEN ------------------------------ You can "move" the panel about the screen by clicking and holding down the LEFT mouse button over the "black title box". An outline will appear around the panel. You can move the outline around the screen until you are satisfied with the screen position. Release the left mouse button to "drop" and redraw the panel. Clicking on the main "parent box" centers the panel on the screen. CLEARING ALL TEXT ----------------- Double-clicking in the blank space between the "button boxes" allows you to clear ALL text in one fell swoop ! LINE SEPERATORS --------------- If you are a seasoned alert box maker you will no doubt be familiar with the "|" character. This character is used within the GFA interpreter to seperate text lines. You DO NOT need to use the "|" character below the Delete key to seperate lines within the program. The program does this for you. If you do, the text on that line will be shortened to only those characters which preceed the "|" . PLACING TEXT WITHIN QUOTATION MARKS ----------------------------------- If you put a word in quotations, the GFA Interpreter will NOT register that line as a line of code. That line will be preceeded by a ==> . This is easily fixed. If the line is... ==> a.1$=" This is line "1" of the box. " change it to... a.1$=" This is line ""1"" of the box. " . IOW: Put an extra set of quotation marks around the quotation marks. PURPOSE ------- To spend as little time as possible creating alert boxes . All you need to do is flip to the GFA menu bar to create an alert. ABOUT THE NUMBER OF SPACES PER LINE ----------------------------------- GFA Basic documentation states that you can only have 30 characters per "text" line. I personally can get 31 characters. I don't know why so I made the lines 30 characters long (in case I'm the only one who gets 31). The maximum number of characters per "button" text is stated to be 8, so I made it 8 (no, I can't get 9 here :-). The "big button" is completely undocumented in the GFA books I have. I just stumbled onto it one day. I've seen alot of other programs use "big buttons" so I assume it's legal. Here again, _I_ can get 31 characters into this box, but I've set the program at 30 (so as to comply with GFA "text length" standards). You can always edit the .LST file in the Interpreter to add that one extra character if you need it. UNCALERT.CUR ------------ UncleAlert supports the UncleMouse .CURsor file format, making it possible for you to create your OWN custom mice for UncleAlert ! After creating a .CURsor file with UncleMouse, place it in the SAME directory as UNCALERT.PRG/ACC and rename it UNCALERT.CUR. When UncleAlert is invoked, it looks to see if it can find a file named UNCALERT.CUR. If it does, it loads the new mouse shape. If it doesn't, it uses it's own cursor. The "hot spot" for the supplied .CURsor is it's center. This means that the center of the cursor must be OVER an object before a click is recognized. You can always edit this file with Unclemouse to alter any of it's attributes. CREDITS ------- Thanks to Larry D. Duke for his .LST file on merging .RSC files and for TT compatibility. UncleAlert, UncleMouse & associated files (C)Carl J. Hafner FormDoIt! (C) Gribnif Software GEM is a registered trademark of Digital Research. UncleAlert remains the sole property of the author, although there is NO fee for you to use it. cjh - 7/20/1992 Today in History: "One small step for a man..." VERSION HISTORY --------------- 1.01 - Adds LOAD option. 1.0b - Fixes VERY rare bug which COULD cause the panel to jump into the menu bar. Improved error detection. 1.0a - Adds FormDoIt! "move" compatibility and .CURsor file support. 1.0 - Original version.