                                 HEADLINE NEWS

                                      by
 
                              Design Engineering
                                 P.O. Box 3914
                                Lacey, WA 98503

                              Voice: 360-491-8737
                                BBS: 360-456-7951

                                  VERSION 0.91
                                     10/16/95


NOTE:  NEW RELEASE INFORMATION CAN NOW BE FOUND AT THE END OF THIS DOCUMENT.

OVERVIEW
--------
Headline News is a plugin for Excalibur that displays a text file in a scrolling
text window.  This window is created as a small child window that occupies the
top portion of your Excalibur display and moves and resizes any other windows
that might be currently occupying some of the window space that Headline News
will be using.  This prevents the news window from being hidden by another
window (like the main Excalibur screen window).

Headline News consists of two files: headcam.dll and headline.dll.  headcam.dll
is a Camelot plug-in and headline.dll is a user plug-in.  When the user does not
have headline.dll, he or she will be prompted to download it by the Excalibur
terminal.  In addition to downloading headline.dll, a text file that is
specified as a command line parameter to the plug-in action is also downloaded.
The text file is not stored on the user's disk, however.  A copy of it is
kept in the user's memory while Headline News is running.

Headline News requires that you have file sharing installed on your BBS computer
(users are not required to have file sharing loaded).  If you are running
Windows 3.1 you will need the following line in your config.sys file:

install=c:\dos\share.exe

If share.exe is in a directory other than c:\dos, specify the correct path.  If
you are running Windows 3.11 you will need the following line in the [386Enh]
section of your system.ini file:

device=vshare.386


SETTING UP HEADLINE NEWS
------------------------
Headline News requires that the registration serial number be entered in the
HEADLINE.INI file which must be in your \WINDOWS directory.  The contents of
this file are as follows:

[Registration]
SerialNumber=PUT YOUR SERIAL NUMBER HERE

The headcam DLL is called with a Plug-In action in a .scr file.  Add an action
to a button or menu item and specify the DLL name as headcam.dll (be sure that
headcam.dll and headline.dll are in your Excalibur system directory).  Several
command parameters are available as follows:

-cn            Color.  Set the text color.  n is a number between 1 and 15 and
               selects the color as follows:

                               0 Unused       8 Lt Gray
                               1 Red          9 Lt Red
                               2 Green       10 Lt Green
                               3 Brown       11 Yellow
                               4 Blue        12 Lt Blue
                               5 Magenta     13 Lt Magenta
                               6 Cyan        14 Lt Cyan
                               7 Gray        15 White

-f<filename>   Filename.  The filename of the .txt file that will be displayed by
               Headline News.  This is a required command parameter.  There is no
               space between the -f and the filename.  The filename must be the
               full pathname of the file (e.g. c:\excal\news.txt).  You can
               create the .txt file with the Windows Notepad program or similar
               text editor.  When creating the file, be sure to keep the
               line length small enough to work on a 640x480 display (unless you
               use the -l option described below).  If Headline News is currently
               running, then this text file will replace the current text.  String
               substitution macros like ~first~, ~date~, etc. are replaced with
               the appropriate text (See STRING SUBSTITUTION MACROS below).

-k             Kill Headline News.  Closes Headline News and resizes the main
               graphics window to fit the Excalibur window again.

-l             Left Scroll.  This option makes the text scroll in from the right
               side of the Headline News window towards the left, rather than the
               default of text expanding in the center of the window.  The display
               pauses at each carriage return that it encounters in the text file,
               then erases the window, and then starts scrolling the next line in
               from the left.  A continuous "ticker tape" look can be obtained by
               creating a single line of text with no carriage returns.  Select
               the Word Wrap option in Notepad to make it easier to edit text like
               this.

-n             No frame.  This option turns off the gray frame that is displayed
               around the scrolling text by default.  When this option is
               specified, the Headline news window will be somewhat smaller
               vertically.

-p             Permanent.  This option makes the Headline News window "permanent".
               User's cannot close Headline News when this option is used.

-sn            Scrolling Speed.  Set the initial speed of the character scrolling.
               n is a number between 50 and 500 and represents the delay in
               milliseconds between characters.  The default is 100.  User's
               may increase the initial speed by clicking their right mouse
               button in the Headline News text window and decrease it by
               left clicking.

-t"string"     Title.  Set the text in the Headline News caption bar to "string".
               By default the title is "Headline News".  The text string must be
               surrounded by quotes and may include spaces.  Also, there is
               no space between -t and the first quote.


EXAMPLES
--------
To display the file news.txt with an initial speed of 150ms per character,
the command line specified when you add the Plug-In action is:

-fc:\excal\news.txt -s150

To display products.txt with green text, with the gray frame turned off, and
with a caption bar title of "New Releases", the command line is:

-fc:\excal\screens\products.txt -n -t"New Releases" -c10


STRING SUBSTITUTION MACROS
--------------------------
Headline News supports string substitution macros in the text file that are replaced
at display time with the appropriate user and time information.  All of the string
substitution macros are of the form ~string~ and may be included anywhere in the
text.  The following macros are supported:

	~first~		The user's first name
	~last~		The user's last name
	~handle~	The user's handle
	~date~		Today's date in Windows format
	~weekday~	The day of the week
	~wday~		The 3 letter abbreviation for the day of the week
	~monthname~	Month of the year
	~mname~		The 3 letter abbreviation for the month of the year
	~year~		The full year (e.g., 1995)
	~yr~		The abbreviation for the year (e.g. 95)
	~day~		The day of the month (1-31)
	~month~		The month (1-12)


WARNING
-------
We have discovered a bug with the new Excalibur screen timers.  If you specify
a user plug-in as the action for the screen timer, your Camelot node will GPF
when the user logs off.  The GPF will occur even if the user is no longer
running the plug-in when he or she logs off.  However, specifying the same
plug-in from a button or menu item does not cause the GPF.  Camelot does not
give a visible indication of the GPF, but will note it in the camelot.log file
found in your Excalibur system directory.

We strongly recommend that you do not start headcam.dll with a screen timer.
Doing so on our system sent us off on a 4-hour wild goose chase looking for a
bug in the Headline News program code that didn't exist.

WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 0.91
--------------------------
This version fixes a bug that could cause Headline News to crash if there is
not a carriage return after the last line in the text file.  There are no new
features in this release.


WHAT's NEW IN VERSION 0.90
--------------------------
Headline News will restart with a new text file each time a new plug-in action
for HEADCAM.DLL is executed.  This allows you to change the displayed text in
Headline News as needed.  A plug-in action for HEADCAM.DLL with a command
option of -k causes Headline News to shut down.  The new -l option
described above, causes text to scroll in from the left rather than from the
center of the Headline News window.  Also, string substitutions allow you to
customize/personalize your message to your users.  See the STRING SUBSTITION
MACROS section above for details.

WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 0.83
--------------------------
The bug that caused some users to see a blank window with no text has been
fixed.  Also, Headline News no longer copies the text file to the user's
disk, but rather keeps a copy of it in memory.  A new feature is the -p
option which allows you to mark the Headline News window as "permanent".
This means that users will not be able to close Headline News until they
logoff from your board.

The default character speed has been changed from 150 milliseconds to 100
milliseconds for a slightly faster display.

WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 0.82
--------------------------
There was a color palette problem in 0.81 when running with Excelerate.  This
has been corrected.  Also, if the main Excalibur screen was maximized when
Headline News was started, it would be hidden behind the screen.  Headline
now restores the main screen to normal if it was maximized.

WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 0.81
--------------------------
We've fixed the bug with the -t option that caused a strange flashing window
when doing a local login.  Also, the first line of your text file will be 
displayed when the message repeats.  There is one new feature in Version 0.81:
you can set the text color with the -c option.  The -c option is described in
the SETTING UP HEADLINE NEWS section.
