*****************************************************************************
*                                                                           *
*                              ****************                             *
*                              * AutoMenu 1.0 *                             *
*                              ****************                             *
*                                                                           *
*                                     by                                    *
*                                                                           *
*                             Jean-Laurent PRADEL                           *
*                                Februar 1993                               *
*                                                                           *
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                                 Introduction
                                 

       It was a cold day in October or November, so I decided to make
       something with Bob. Bob is my computer... But this day was
       special, because I realized that I was really fed up to lose
       time to type a full path and the good name (after some dir/w)
       to retrieve finally the program that I wanted to use...

       So I jumped in TP 6... And start this program...






                                Why, What ?
                                

       When you want to have an easy acces to a program, the DOS proposes
       you to create a PATH line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT... You rapidly
       realize that this line becomes longer and longer... And you always
       need to remember the name of the good EXE program...

                                  BORING !

       It 's why I created AUTOMENU. In fact, you can find others programs
       which offer more possibilities than mine. But I really want to have
       one in graphic mode... Maybe I was boring to ear some people saying
       "Oh, you search the name ! This will not happend with a Macintosh !"

       To resume, AUTOMENU is an opening menu Creator...!
       Hum... Creator...!?!
       You will need to help it a little bit...






                            How does it work ?
                            

       This program is in fact composed of 2 programs :

            - Initor which creates the menu... (A file named MENU.ACC)
            - Automenu which 'executes' this menu...

       First, you need to set up your menu. For this use the program
       INITOR. This program will scan your disk, get the tree, and
       propose you to select the programs that you want to put in your
       menu...

       Type INITOR (Disk)
            (Disk) indicates which disk will be scanned.
            Examples : INITOR C or INITOR D
       If the file MENU.ACC already exists on C:\, it will propose you
       to 'overwrite' it or 'add or del events'...
       After what, it will scan your disk. Then you will be able to
       make a round in yours directories...

       If you choose 'Search EXE', the program will give you the list
       of the executables programs (EXE, COM and BAT) in the current
       directory. The files .EXE will appear in Red, the files .COM
       in Magenta and the files .BAT in Darkgrey.
       Just select a file and give a name to the label which will
       represent the program. I limited this name to 8 caracters for this
       version.

       When you are OK, go back until leaving the program.

       INITOR writes always a file MENU.ACC in the root directory of C:,
       and only here...!

       And now.... You just need to type..... AUTOMENU...

       I leave you the surprise...






                                Problems...!
                                

       Yes, I know... A good program has no problem...
       But I never said that it 's a good program....!

       Seriously, I know few problems...:

       Generally : It 's possible that the programs never find your
                   mouse...! This could happen with old drivers
                   specially with old Logitech Drivers...
                   This could happen if you use the driver which
                   comes with Windows (I think only Win 3.0...).

       With INITOR : It 's simply not perfect... For example, it can
                     only display correctly 32 directories (you will
                     see that it 's not a problem if you have a nice
                     tree on your HD) and 54 executables programms !
                     That 's could be a problem, not with the normals
                     directories which only contain a main program
                     but it 's a problem with the DOS directory and
                     the WINDOWS directory (only if you have not make
                     a lot of subdirectories...).
                     Nethertheless you can select the COMMAND.COM to get
                     a Dos-Shell (you could quit it easily with 'exit'!).

       With AUTOMENU : It 's the more stupid program that I never write !
                       It makes no test for the mouse, the MENU.ACC file
                       and others things. I eliminated those tests to
                       win momery place.
                       It needs now 50400 Kb of memory to run... It 's not
                       a problem with most of the programs (Windows, Games,
                       and what you want...). But a friend saw that some
                       big games had no more enough memory (WC for example).






                                Informations
                                

       I would like to distribute this program as POSTWARE ! I just will
       be very happy to receive a beautifful postcard of your city or
       something else ???!!!....

             Before May 93 :             After May 93 :

             Jean-Laurent PRADEL         Jean-Laurent PRADEL (always me !)
             Im Sohlgraben 1A            Ch. Pigros Sud
             D 3550 MARBURG              Villa Le Sapin Bleu
                                         83170 BRIGNOLES
             Germany
                                         France

       You could also give me your hot remarks by E-Mail :
             Pidou@astro.chemie.uni-marburg.de
       (but I really like the postcards...)

       Something else ! For this program, I used an Unit to program the
       mouse in graphic mode... I wrote this unit for few mounths...
       And you could found it in Simtel20 /turbopas, and all the mirrors
       of Simtel20 (WuArchive for example...).

       I hope that you will like it...!



       Have fun.                                            Viele Spa.

                             Amusez vous bien.  



       Jean-Laurent PRADEL.