John Hancock Release 2 README.2ND --------------------------------- (c) Copyright 1988,1989 The Silicon Frog All Rights Reserved Environmental Impact Statement ------------------------------ John Hancock release 2.00 no longer contains enzymes, cyclamates, FDA red #1, and certain questionable oligonucleotides or mind-altering peptides or amino acids. John Hancock is now totally biodegradable and will not harm the environment. After years of testing, the Sturgeon General has determined that John Hancock is as good as Beluga Caviar, a heck of a lot cheaper, and does not come from Iran or Communist countries. John Hancock will no longer cause genetic damage in your offsprings, but it may sterilize you. Safety first, however: DO NOT exchange bodily fluids with John Hancock, or inject John Hancock tag lines into your messages with dirty needles. John Hancock release 1.00 was found to have certain undesirable side-effects on the human brain, mostly in the reduction of mental capacities, as witnessed by the millions of totally mindless tag lines published to date. People with human appearance, but lacking a brain may use John Hancock without fear. If you are human, and think you have a brain, and JH had detrimental effects on you, make sure you didn't take your brain out, played with it, and possibly misplaced it. What is New In Release 2 ------------------------ Other than the EPA-compliant changes mentioned above, John Hancock release 2 features the following: 1. A new release number. The JH release number went from 1.00 to 2, following the application of an extremely complex mathematical algorithm. Many such algorithms are used in JH programs, which is what makes them so good, user-friendly, and likeable. Most other, run-of-the-mill shareware goes thru an standard process referred to as "Last Attempt To Enhance", a.k.a LATE releases. Actually, these programs' sophistication and feature-richness lie mostly in how release numbers are assigned, and how often new releases are produced. JH's release-numbering scheme never used decimals because the programs are clean and will never exhibit the old well-known 1.01619A/1 "Oops" syndrome. This is sad. 1.11.4.a8.01 A new file extension. Old .TXT files are gone, long live .TAG files. It makes more sense. Also, it allows JH to work with: 1.13.7778b/77521-rev B2 EZ-RDR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JH release 2 is now supported by EZ-Reader, release 1.23. 2. A new README file. Many of the tens of people who cheerfully registered JH told me that the README file itself was worth the incredibly low $5 registration price, which is now the incredibly low $10 registration price. To these people, JH 2 is dedicated, as well as this README.2ND file. ASIDE ----- Incidentally, the $5 registration was really an experiment to prove a point; it worked. Everybody who owns or uses a PC and plays with JH has five bucks to spare. The real point is, people don't care much any more, we are getting lazy, and our pride, honesty, and sense of honor as a nation are eroding quickly. We like to get away with stuff, and we end up lying to our own selves a lot. At the risk of alienating many, not paying for shareware which is used frequently and productively is not much different -- ethically -- from conveniently forgetting to return borrowed money or items to friends who loaned them to you and trusted you in the first place. Do you know anyone like that? EOA (END-OF-ASIDE) ------------------ 2.0712 A new compact version of JH appropriately called JHJr. JHJr requires approximately 11k bytes of disk space. Although many of JH's bells and whistles are not in the Junior version, the program still supports extended screen sizes (EGA/VGA), on-the-fly addition of tag lines, JH-compatible tag-line encryption and decryption. Of course, JHJr is fully compatible with DeLuxe 1.11 and EZ-Reader 1.23. And JHJr is mouse-friendly. Last, but sointly not least, JH Junior is the *smallest* JH clone available on the market, regardless of features. 3. Four-on-the-floor. A new program, Robin Hancock (RobbinH), has been added to the JH System. RobbinH is intended for kleptomaniacs or people who lack imagination, time, or both, and wish they could come up with tag lines as good as mine. RobbinH, as its name indicates, steals from the tag-line rich to give to the tag-line poor. RobbinH is dedicated to Sparky who only has two good tag lines, both of which were stolen with RobbinH. RobbinH, fortunately, is only available to those who registered JH. Thus, as poetic justice should have it, they who didn't register JH will have their tag lines stolen by they who did. Also, unless you have RobbinH, you will not be able to decipher the nasty translated tag lines sent to you by others. RobbinH, incidentally, will steal tag lines from all known mail readers. At least, from those in existence at the time JH 2 was released. NOTE (don't read unless you plan on registering): You will get FAR more than Robbin Hancock when you register JH, but what you get is a secret. I have been heavily criticized by JH beta testers for almost giving this stuff away. How do you register (or send for the Bonus if you're already registered)? Read the JHINTRO.DOC file for details. 4. A mouse-friendly text editor, JHEd, which may be used on standard ASCII files as well as on your JH Tag Line files. 5. All John Hancock programs have been made mouse-friendly. If you have a Microsoft or compatible mouse, you can use it to scroll, zip ((c) P.Katz) thru menus, change colors, and scratch that itch. JH itself can be operated almost totally with a mouse, except for a few extremely sophisticated functions, such as typing stuff. JH Release 3 will be completely mouse-driven and will require familiarity with Morse Code. This, of course, is facilitated by the 1,445 (as of last count) Free / Share / PD-Ware Morse Code trainers available on BBSs everywhere. JH may barf with Logitech mice, which is to be expected since that company has refused to send me an evaluation unit. Of course, when I called the dudes at Logitech, their answer was "Mais non, monsieur, eet eeze ze Microsoft mouse zat eese not compatible weeze ours.". And so eet goze. 5. JH programs which can access multiple .TAG files now display these in scrollable windows rather than ask you to input the filename. This excellent idea occurred to me after libations, when I was totally unable to remember any of the alternate .TAG file names and kept typing $#%09 >><.0 instead of DIR *.TAG 6. JH now supports 10 color configuration files. The idea occured to me in a Frederick's of Hollywood store, while staring at a box of cute multicolored lace bikini panties with the days of the week written on them. Colors can be changed very easily by pressing undocumented number keys located on the top row of your keyboard for JH and JHMAINT, and Alt-number for JHEd. 6.1162/99877/84.001651 Support for EGA and VGA palettes, which allows you to chose 16 screen colors out of 64. A lot of otherwise decent and expensive mail reader programs don't give you this great feature. Heck, a lot of ANY kind of programs don't do it. 7. JHMAINT no longer supports .SIG files or the default tags in DELUXE.CFG. Because of its obvious technological superiority, JH no longer tolerates inferior tagging methods. DeLuxe 1.11 no longer supports .SIG files for the same reason. 8. JH displays two windows on screen. The new, smaller window, contains .TAG filenames. Pressing the C key passes control to the file select window from which you may pick a new signature file. This has already been covered in item 5 above, and I am just testing you. The screen is not cleared when a new file is selected; it is merely displayed in a new window atop the old one. Since .TAG windows are now variable in size, the new window may be shorter than its predecessor. A neat, totally useless effect reminiscent of cheap note pads with unequal-length pages. 9. The JH Text Find function has received a face lift. Signatures which contain matching text are displayed in their own window, which overlays the .TAG window, rather than being individually tagged in the main .TAG window. As a result of this stroke of genius, the Find Next command has been done away with. Don't be sad; it was given a proper burial with all honors due its lack of rank. 10. JH has been equipped with aesthetically pleasing tag line massaging features. The signature may be framed with special characters such as +!@#$%(&+|<>?{}[]/\ etc... This feature is extremely useful with bad tag lines, since it hides their poor contents by making them look pretty: ________________ Glarb Knopfu Zinklart _________________ An old Flurbanian expression which means "Glarb Knopfu Zinklart" 11. JH has been equipped with aesthetically displeasing features. Actually, two feature: Invert or Translate the Signature, which drives the recipient bonkers. An inverted line looks like : ?nreV, naem I tahw wonK There's no point in showing you a translated line, since you won't know what it means, and telling you would reveal the secret code. One interesting fact, however. The translation is a true cipher rather than a brain-dead character substitution. JH itself will decipher someone else's ciphered tag lines. Of course, you have to be able to STEAL the tag line in the first place; no one in their right mind would want to write it down because all translated tag lines consist of high-order ASCII characters. See item 3. above for further details. Darn, I just loooove being devious. Note that JH clones, if they exist, cannot decipher these tag lines. 12. JHCONFIG has been Menued. You no longer need to press ANY numeric keys to select menu options. If you own a mouse, the rodent can be used exclusively. If you don't own a mouse, send me US$450 in small, unmarked bills, and I will send you one UPS next-day delivery. 13. For Nevada users, the JH One-Arm-Tagger feature. This only works after you send me $10 in quarters, though. Press the Gamble Key, and JH will pick a signature at random. You will not know which one unless you're awfully fast. *True* gamblers won't peek. 14. For EGA or VGA users, JH, JHMAINT, and JHED support extended text screen sizes. And they do it better than most. Although standard extended screen sizes are 43 lines for the EGA and 50 lines for the VGA, certain "Super-EGA" adapters allow 50 lines when attached to multi-syncing monitors (ie, the Video-7 VEGA Deluxe adapter). If your SuperEGA supports VGA text modes, so will JH. And JH can make your VGA do 43 lines, yes. Pressing the F2 key in these programs toggles between the default 25-line screen and the extended screen size. 15. JHSens, a keyboard and mouse sensitivity-setting program. If you are a sensitive person, and wish to impart this quality to your PC input equipment, JHSens is for you. If you strike your keyboard with your fist or spin your mouse by its cable, never mind. 16. New, improved screen shows to introduce you to the new, improved JH programs. Shows were created with FirstLook, which is also a product of the Silicon Frog, Inc., but is neither shareware nor cheap. Nor released, for that matter. But one of these days.... BUG FIXES --------- 1. JH still has not been tested under networking or multitasking environments. Since my brain doesn't multitask, neither does JH. So, rather than fixing this, I am documenting it as a feature. Besides, DesqView and NetBIOS should have been made JH-friendly in the first place (1). JH, now WITHOUT Network Support!!!!!!! Didn't they do that with cyclamates in Sweet'n Lo and enzymes in detergent? Ah, America. If you go for this stuff, you probably own a pair of non-prismatic binoculars and bought your honey a string of Faux Pearls, right? 2. JH would cause a hard lockup if it found a file anywhere on your disk that contained the strings "Debbie does Unix" or "Bruce does OS/2". This has been corrected (2) 3. JH would crash and burn if your main color choice for the tag window was purple on green or brown on gray. This was purposeful and merely reflected a total lack of taste on the part of the user, which JH would not tolerate. This has been corrected; JH now barfs on completely different colors combinations (3) 4. JHMaint would scramble DELUXE.CFG if it found a tag line in there that read "For Quality, buy SparkWare". This is corrected. JHMaint now unconditionally scrambles DELUXE.CFG. (4) 5. There is no truth to the rumor that JH will stop operating if it is not registered within three months of its first use. If you do not register within three months, Guido and Carmine will make sure that YOU stop operating. (5) 6. There is ABSOLUTELY NO TRUTH to the rumor that some good-looking females received discounts or free JH registrations in exchange for, er, favors. (6) 7. High intensity backgrounds used to cause large clouds of black smoke to emanate from dirt-cheap Taiwanese CGA clones. This has been corrected. The smoke is now high-intensity magenta, and emanates from all cheap Asian EGA and VGA clones as well.(7) 8. JHCONFIG would inadvertently drop you to DOS if you selected Maurice's favorite colors. This has been corrected. JHCONFIG now picks on someone else.(8) 9. There is no truth to the rumor that delay loops were executed when JH was run on a PS/2, just to discredit IBM. IBM does not need JH's help to discredit itself. "We may be slow, but at least we're expensive"...(9) NOTES ----- (1) Partially true. One user reported problems under DV. This has been the only reported problem with JH. Scout's honor. (2)(3)(4)(8): totally manufactured for your entertainment (5) there's only one way to find out. (6) it depends (7) Two reports with SHOW, no reports against JH. Cheap and only partially-compatible CGA clones may cause real problems when trying to display high-intensity backgrounds. See details in JH2SHOWS.ZIP. (9) True, mostly. IBM is finding it more and more difficult to sell their equipment when nameless clones that sell for one-third the price can outperform the True Blue machines. BUGS NOT FIXED -------------- 1. JH.EXE will summarily terminate if you press Ctrl-Alt-Del, or press the reset button, or power off your computer. It may also abort if you strike the computer with a large, heavy, and blunt object such as your mother-in-law.(1) 2. JHMAINT.EXE will terminate with an error 9 if you try to feed it a zero-length .TAG file. JH.EXE may exhibit the same symptoms. I could have fixed it, but did not. This bug was left behind purposely to provide an excuse for people who will use JH every day but will not register it. Besides, empty .TAG files are not much to brag about.(2) 3. JH Junior's background is blue. On a Zenith XT clone equipped with a Zenith CGA clone, it may be green. (3) 4. JHED may exhibit peculiar behavior with older Logitech mice, or with older Logitech mouse users.(4) 5. JH programs will not produce 43- or 50-line screens on CGA or MDA/Hercules adapters. Although Hercules extended screen support could have been added, it was not for the same reason as (2) above. 6. JH Junior is only 11,208 bytes. No matter how hard we tried, we could not make the program larger. We considered using Turbo Pascal 5.5, but realized it would make JHJr too big. (1) All true. Do not try the last one at home, though. (2) Absolutely true. (3) Absolutely true. (4) Absolutely true. (5) Absolutely true. (6) Absolutely true. FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE -------------------- Twenty-seven people registered JH release 1.0, for a total income of $185(US), plus one Canadian $1 coin. A few people sent more than the $5 I asked for. Thanks to all of you. $22 was used to mail complete Qmodem 4.0 packages to my JH beta testers (I earned the Qmodems by editing/writing the Qmodem 4.0 docs during the 1988 year-end holidays). $55 was used to get a license to PKZIP/UNZIP as a distribution tool for the FirstLook package. Approximately $50 was spent on libations and goodies for the Cheers! 1988 Xmas party hosted by Bobbie Sumrada. The remainder, about $60, is being spent on the design of The Silicon Frog's corporate logo. The graphic artist is a friend. JH 3's registration will probably go up again to an absolutely outrageous, unheard-of $25. But you'll get a Silicon Frog John Hancock T-Shirt with it. All registered JH 1 and 2 users will be notified when these collector's items become available -- The Silicon Frog will continue to support its supporters. T-Shirts will come in any size or color as long as it is XL and Light Cyan on Medium Gray. My bet is, I'll have MY T-Shirts out before Friel, and he's been promising his for four years. Total JH Income / Total hours spent = $.19/hr. The fun I had and the people I met made it priceless, though. Why am I doing this? I should be pumping gas. Heck, most stand-up comedians make more than this. Distribution and Registration ----------------------------- JH is distributed as shareware, except for the Robbin Hancock tag-line thief, which is available only to registered users. None of the programs are crippled, and JH is complete as distributed. Robbin was not a part of the original JH, and it is not there to encourage registration. By now, you can't possibly believe that I am doing this for the money, can you? If you registered JH 1.0, you need not register again. JH 1.0 registrations will not be accepted after JH 2 is released. For information on registering and getting the Robbin Hancock program, see the JHINTRO.DOC file. COPYRIGHT & TRADEMARK ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ------------------------------------- Windows, and Graphical User Interface are registered trademarks of Xerox, Apple, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Sun, Apple, Digital Research, Apple, Apollo, neXt, Apple, Apple, and Apple. "Apple" is (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton. "Icon" is a trademark of the Russian Unorthodox Church. "Mouse" is (c) -5,445,676,901 - 1989, God Almighty. "Graphical" is (c) -208,667, Fred & Wilma Flintstone. The Spreadsheet concept and Look'n Feel is a trademark of Wilson-Jones, Inc., for their accountant's columnar pad, first produced in 1837. Others similar designs were stolen from WJ, regardless of delivery medium. Yes, Mitch, that you. The Data Cell, Multifunction Card Machine, fixed-head 3380, PCJr, Chicklet keyboard, PC Convertible, 3850 MSS, SAA, and DAT Box are all trademarks of IBM and would have caused any other company to go belly up had it not been for customers willing to pay 5 times as much for that logo. "Big Blue" is not a trademark of International Business Machines, Inc., Armonk, NY, but the suckers tried. The word "Spread" is a trademark of Kraft, Inc., while the word "Sheet" is a trademark of mn-Slm-R for his papyrus-based writing medium -- or a mispronunciation by Jesse Jackson. "Keyboard" is a registered trademark of Glasnost Pianovaritch, the Russian inventor of the 88-key harpsichord in 1544. His sister Smutmila Takemiova introduced the 101-key harpsichord in 1548, and called it "Extended". In the process, Smutmila moved the function pedals above the keyboard from their original position on the left, which caused a musical upheaval and much public furor. She did, however, enlarge the return pedal so musicians with small feet would find it more easily. Dimitri NorthGatovitvh, Smutmila's high-school boyfriend, made zillions of kopeks by moving the function pedals back to the left, and using tactile pedal and key assemblies, which restored the original feel of Glasnost's machine. Smutmila's stuff felt mushy. "Extended" is (c) 1187 Louis IX, Roy de France. Louis coined the term while watching his unfaithful ex-Queen (Marie de Joliesfesses) being drawn and quartered on the Place du Louvres in Paris. The "drawn" part was especially enjoyable, history books tell us. At the time, good King Louis was drinking a beer, and the draft horses were Clydesdales. Louis' son, Bud, was enjoying himself tremendously when his father said: "Bud, this show's for you". "Piqueselle" is a patent of Charlotte Beaunichons for her embroidering method consisting of small, closely-grouped dots of colored thread which, together, make up a complete picture. "Space Bar" is (c) 12431 Han Solo, Tattooine, Rebel Sector VII. "Q" is (c) 1957, Ian Fleming, for his fictitious James Bond novel character in charge of technological widgets at MI5. Mr. Fleming's estate plans to prosecute all software companies marketing products whose names start with the letter Q to the full extent of Her Majesty's Law. The main basis for the suit is that only 00 agents, NOT Q- prefixed programs, are licensed to kill. "Ebrandwo Glubarni Abmwaca", or EGA, is a patent held by the M'Bwani tribe of the Okolalu Coast, for their vegetal dye-deposition process which yields up to 64 different colors. Raw dye materials are dessicated on a stretcher which is 640 shumbas wide by 350 shumbas deep. (Yellow + Cyan) with envy, the Shnabomi tribe of Equatorial Zazaland patented the "Vamputu Gahdvadanok Ampotaconibo" (VGA) process, where the stretcher is 480 shumbas deep (all stretchers made by the Imbabwo Bladgoafu Mfg. Co. are unfortunately 640 shumbas wide). The VGA process yields many more colors than the EGA process, but the Shnabomi numbering system stops at 3, beyond which all is referred to as "a hell of a lot". As a result, the total number of VGA colors is still unknown, but it sure is a hell of a lot. "Die Or Sink" (DOS) is (c) 1721 Long John Silver, Esq. "80", "87", "88", "186", "188", "286","287", "386", "387", "487", "586", and "587" are all trademarks of the US Department of Transportation for various National Roads and Interstate Highways. "I Plain Are Bored" is (c) 1821, Charlotte Bronte, for her little known novel about little black people with lots of legs being sucked into a large sheet of green plastic. "The Bug Starts Here" is (c) 1987-1989, SparkWare, Inc. "The Bug Stops Here" is (c) 1988-1989, The Silicon Frog, Inc.