WARNING: READ THE DOCUMENTATION BEFORE RUNNING THE PROGRAM! RNDSTART - a random configuration program for Windows 3.1 by Benjamin L. Combee **** BRIEF SYNOPSIS **** RNDSTART is a program which is run outside of Windows 3.1. Using a configuration file you set up, it randomly picks a wallpaper for the background, and start and exit sounds. **** RNDSTART LICENSE **** The program file RNDSTART.EXE is copyrighted by Benjamin L. Combee ("the author"). The program is FREEWARE. You are licensed to: o Use RNDSTART in its unaltered form o Make as many copies of RNDSTART as you wish o Give such copies to anyone o distribute the software via electronic means You are specifically prohibited from charging, or requesting donations, for any such copies, however made; exceptions are for BBS's and commercial on-line systems that charge a membership or time charge. As long as no specific charges are made for this program, this is allowed. Distributing the software with commercial or shareware products is not allowed without prior permission in writing from the author. There is no warranty of any kind, and the author is not liable for damages of any kind. RNDSTART is Copyright (C) 1992 Benjamin L. Combee 3218 Maple Grove Drive, Dalton, GA 30721 or Georgia Tech P.O. Box 30501, Atlanta, GA 30332 Any donations, ideas, suggestions, bugs please write or send some e-mail to: gt0501c@prism.gatech.edu (USENET, Internet e-mail) You may also use the Compuserve to Internet e-mail gateway. Inquire on-line at Compuserve for details. **** MORE DETAILS **** RNDSTART will look for its configuration file (RNDSTART.CFG) in two places. First, it will check the location where the RNDSTART.EXE file is. If it doesn't find it there, it will check the current directory. The configuration file has a simple format. There are four sections that can be placed in any order. Blank lines in the file are ignored. The first section, [WIN.INI], must start with the line: [WIN.INI] The next line after that gives the path to the directory where the WIN.INI file is. On my system, it looks like: c:\win31\ The trailing slash is necessary. The second section, starts with the line [Wallpaper] Each line after that has two field, separated by a space. The first is the pathname of a BMP file to be used as wallpaper. The second is either a 1 or a 0 -- 1 if you want the background tiled, and 0 if you want it centered. The third section starts with the line [Start] It is followed by all the sounds you want to pick from on start up. Again, you must specify the full pathname of the sound file. The fourth section starts with the line [Exit] It is just like the third section except that the sounds listed are to be played upon leaving the system. **** IMPLEMENTATION **** This is my first major program I wrote in Modula-2. I used JPI's Modula-2, version 1.17, with one routine from PMI's Repertoire toolkit. If you find any bugs in it, please let me know. It has worked reliably for several days on my Windows 3.1 setup, but yours may be slightly different. I would recommend backing up your WIN.INI file before running it the first time. Also, make sure you have a good configuration file, and do not specify the whole WIN.INI filename in the [WIN.INI] section, just specify the path to it. **** SAMPLE FILE **** I've included my RNDSTART.CFG file with this package. You can look at it to see how to set yours up. RNDSTART doesn't check to see that the files it puts in the WIN.INI file are there, so make sure that the configuration file has valid files. **** PLEA **** Don't want money... got a full scholarship to Georgia Tech! I would like a postcard from anyone who uses this, just so I can see how its getting out. Also, please upload this all around. I'd like lots of people to use my program. It's an ego thing... if my ego gets big enough, I'll release more of the stuff I do. Seriously, I hope you find this useful. Remember, it's not a bug, its an undocumented feature. **** HISTORY **** v. 1.0 -- 18 Apr 1992 -- First release. Wallpaper, start sound, and end sound changing functionality.