
		      Ŀ
		                                  
		         Crystal Flying Fonts!    
		                                  
		                READ ME           
		         Latest News and Notes    
		             15 April, 1994       
		                                  
		         CrystalGraphics, Inc.    
		                                  
		      



SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS


PC Compatible with a 486 or 386 (math co-processor strongly recommended).

At least 8MB extended RAM (16MB recommended); 20MB available disk space
(40MB recommended).

DOS 3.3 or later.

Mouse or compatible input device.

Supports most popular VGA and Super VGA graphics cards.



PLAYING FLIC (.FLC) FILES IN WINDOWS


If you want to play flics in Windows you can use the included Autodesk
Animation Player, Video For Windows, or a presentation package that
supports .FLC file playback.

The Autodesk Animation Player for Windows, that is included with the
package in the AAWIN directory, allows you to play flics either singly or
in a scripted series. To use this player, you must create a new Windows
Program item for the AAWIN.EXE program. See your Windows documentation for
information about setting up a Program Item, and be sure to set the Working
Directory to the AAWIN directory.

If you have Video For Windows (VfW) you can use the conversion utility in
VidEdit to convert flics (.FLC) into the VfW format for playback in VfW
compatible applications.

If you have a Windows presentation package which supports flics directly
(CorelDraw!, etc.) you can simply include your flics in your presentations.
If your Windows presentation package supports OLE (Harvard Graphics, etc.)
you can play your flics using the AAPLAY.DLL provided in the AAWIN
directory. See your Windows documentation or the program's documentation
for instructions on the installation of DLLs.



BEWARE OF MEMORY MANAGERS


If you are having problems with Crystal Flying Fonts not loading or 
crashing a possible culprit could be your memory manager (HIMEM, QEMM, 
386MAX, etc.). The purpose of most memory managers is to relocate Terminate 
and Stay Resident programs (TSR's) from low memory (below 640K) to high 
memory thus making more low memory available to applications. However, 
Flying Fonts uses your high memory directly and may be conflicting with 
one of these TSR's or the manager itself. First, try rebooting your 
computer with a special versions of your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT which 
has no memory manager and loads nothing in high memory. If this fixes the 
problem then try selectively removing your TSR's from high memory to find 
out which one is causing the problem (note that DOS itself is a TSR and is 
loaded high with the line DOS=HIGH).



FLC UTILITY


A utility program has been included: FLCMOD.EXE

This utility encodes a header and/or trailer pause into a .FLC (flic) file. 
Use this when you plan to play a flic with a package that does not support 
this feature in software. The usage is:

     FLCMOD <infile.flc> <outfile.flc> /Hxx /Txx

     /Hxx adds a pause of xx seconds to the beginning of the FLC.
     /Txx adds a pause of xx seconds to the end of the FLC.

You may have one or both switches.

For example:

     FLCMOD in.flc out.flc /H1.5 /T2

encodes a pause of 1.5 seconds after the first frame and 2 seconds after 
the last frame to out.flc.

Note: The header and trailer are now part of the output flic.  The utility
      actually just inserts null frames to account for the time.



KNOWN PROBLEMS - With Advised Work Arounds


I)   Problem:

     On some 486 machines, the Summagraphics Summasketch tablet, though
     properly configured, may cause the Crystal software to cancel out of a
     rendering process when the stylus or puck is left in contact with the
     tablet surface, or in some cases, the tablet may not operate (i.e. no
     cursor movement) after loading the Crystal software.

     Possible Cause:

     The TSR file, called SUMMA.COM (dated 6/26/90), that is included with
     Crystal software is an older version which was not designed to handle
     faster computers. As a result, there may be incompatibilities between
     certain machines and this driver when used with Crystal software.

     Solution:

     Use Summagraphics' TSR file, SUMMATAB.COM (dated 12/02/92), rather than
     SUMMA.COM to initialize the Summagraphics tablet.
     
     Follow the steps given below to initialize your tablet using the
     SUMMATAB.COM file. If you prefer to initialize the Summagraphics
     tablet from CONFIG.SYS, you may use another file, SUMMATAB.SYS. Refer
     to the documentation file called SUMMATAB.DOC for details on how to
     use that driver. Note, this causes the Summagraphics tablet to emulate
     a Microsoft Mouse.
     
     1.   Edit your AUOTEXEC.BAT file to change the line that specifies the
          path to the SUMMA.COM to instead read the path to the
          SUMMATAB.COM file. You must specify the options or parameters
          desired.
          
          For example, your AUTOEXEC.BAT file may have a line such as this:
          
          c:\ffonts\summa /12 /2
          
          ---the "/12" specifies the type of Summagraphics tablet you are
          using.
          ---the "/2" specifies the com port number the tablet is connected
          to.
          
          You would edit the line to read:
          
          c:\ffonts\summatab /2 /A
          
          ---the "/2" specifies the com port number
          ---the "/A" specifies that you want to use the tablet in Absolute
          mode which means that a specific point on the tablet is always
          mapped to a specific point on the screen (this is the way your
          Summagraphics tablet works when using the SUMMA.COM driver). The
          other option is Relative mode and it causes the tablet to behave
          much like a mouse does.
          
     2.   Regardless of whether you set the Absolute or Relative mode for
          SUMMATAB.COM (in AUTOEXEC.BAT), you will need to change the
          tablet overlay interpreter file for the Crystal software from
          "summa.ovr" to "mouse.ovr". To do this, use the Crystal SETUP
          utility and change the Input Device Setup to "Mouse".



INSTALLER LICENSE NOTICE


The installation program used to install this CrystalGraphics product, 
INSTALL, is based on licensed software provided by Knowledge Dynamics 
Corp., P.O. Box 1558 Canyon Lake, Texas 78130-1558 (USA). INSTALL is 
Copyright (c)1987-1992 by Knowledge Dynamics Corp. which reserves all 
copyright protection worldwide. INSTALL is provided to you for the 
exclusive purpose of installing Crystal Flying Fonts. CrystalGraphics, 
Inc. has modified the software as provided by Knowledge Dynamics Corp., and 
thus the performance and behavior of the INSTALL program shipped with 
Crystal Flying Fonts may not represent the performance and behavior of 
INSTALL as shipped by Knowledge Dynamics Corp. CrystalGraphics, Inc. is 
exclusively responsible for the support of Crystal Flying Fonts, 
including support during the installation phase. In no event will Knowledge 
Dynamics Corp. provide any technical support for Crystal Flying Fonts.
