Copyright: Copyright ® M N Summerfield 1995


 No Blink

No Blink and No Blink with Date/Time are two tiny programs which will make your text cursor (caret) rock steady.

No Blink with Date/Time will also display a digital clock formatted any way you like.

Options (No Blink with Date/Time only)

Installation

Compatibility

Licence

Version 1.0  13 April, 1995


Options (No Blink with Date/Time only)

No Blink with Date/Time can be run with none, one, some or all of the following command line options in any order. Any option specified will over-ride the equivalent default setting. If an invalid option is given it will be ignored and the default will remain set.

Note that command line options are case sensitive and the option's value must follow immediately after the equals sign.

Example command lines:

C:\PD\NOBLINKT.EXE font="ariel" size=12 format="hh:mm m/d/yy"

C:\PD\NOBLINKT.EXE top=0 format="hh:mm" italic fore=12

C:\PD\NOBLINKT.EXE bold font="times new roman" nail

back=

Background colour number in the range 0 to 15. The colour represented by each number is shown below:

0 » Black	8 » Grey

1 » Blue	9 » Light Blue

2 » Green	10 » Light Green

3 » Cyan	11 » Light Cyan

4 » Red	12 » Light Red

5 » Magenta	13 » Light Magenta

6 » Yellow	14 » Light Yellow

7 » White	15 » Bright White

bold

If this word appears on the command line the font will be displayed bold.

font=""

The quoted string is the name of any font installed on your computer.

fore=

Foreground colour number in the range 0 to 15. (See back=, above, for the colour represented by each number.)

format=""

The quoted string tells No Blink with Date/Time what to display. The format string is built from the following which may be used in any order and which are separated by spaces, slashes or full-stops:

d	Day as a number (1 to 31).

dd	Day as a number with a leading zero (01 to 31).

ddd	Day as an abbreviation (Mon to Sun).

dddd	Day in full (Monday to Sunday).

m	Month as a number (1 to 12).  [Except after h or hh when m means minute.]

mm	Month as a number with a leading zero (01 to 12). [Except after h or hh when m means minute.]

mmm	Month as an abbreviation (Jan to Dec).

mmmm	Month in full (January to December).

yy	Year as 2 digits (00 to 99).

yyyy	Year as 4 digits (1000 to 9999).

h	Hour (0 to 23).

hh	Hour with leading zeros (00 to 23).

n	Minute (0 to 59). [Could use m.]

nn	Minute with leading zeros (00 to 59). [Could use mm.]

s	Second (0 to 59). [Not recommended.]

ss	Second with leading zeros (00 to 59). [Not recommended.]

AM/PM	Use the 12-hour clock with AM or PM displayed as appropriate.

am/pm	Use the 12-hour clock with am or pm displayed as appropriate.

interval=

Interval in milliseconds in the range 51 to 65499 between updates of the clock. (The default is 3000, 3 seconds.)

italic

If this word appears on the command line the font will be displayed italicised.

left=

Use this to specify the x-position of No Blink with Date/Time. 0 means left of the screen. (By default No Blink with Date/Time settles at the bottom right of the screen.)

nail

No Blink with Date/Time will appear above all other application windows. However if this word appears on the command line No Blink with Date/Time will be reset to be above all other windows at each interval which may be useful if one or more other "always on top" windows are used, e.g. Windows Help.

size=

Size in points in the range 8 to 499 of the display font.

top=

Use this to specify the y-position of No Blink with Date/Time. 0 means top of the screen. (By default No Blink with Date/Time settles at the bottom right of the screen.)


Licence

You are free to use NoBlink for as long as you wish free of charge. You may copy NoBlink freely and give the copies away.

You may not sell NoBlink, nor include it with software which is sold without written permission of the author. If you are a shareware vendor you may charge a small fee for media, copying and postage, but nothing for the software itself. NoBlink may not be put on a magazine cover disk without written permission from the author.

The software is not supported, but if you have any problems (or solutions!), the author would be glad to hear from you.

NoBlink is copyright © Mark Summerfield 1995: all rights reserved.

Postal Address:	6 Pantygwydr Road, Uplands, Swansea, SA2 OJB, UK.

Email:	msummerf@fdgroup.co.uk

Other utility software by the author of NoBlink:

ugrep for Windows, a simple grep program.

ucopy for Windows, a backup/file and directory mirroring program, with user-definable scripts.

PA for Windows, a multi-purpose utility program.

Tactix for Windows, a game.


Installation

No Blink

Copy NOBLINK.EXE, and optionally NOBLINK.HLP, (this file), to the same directory on your hard disk.

Start Program Manager and open the group you want to launch No Blink from. ("StartUp" is recommended). Now select File|New to create a new item and use the Browse command to locate NOBLINK.EXE. No Blink is now ready to run. Note that when run the only visible clues that it is running are that your caret is steady and No Blink appears in your Task Manager's list of running programs. No Blink can only be terminated by selecting it in Task Manager and choosing End Task.

No Blink with Date/Time

Copy NOBLINKT.EXE, and optionally NOBLINK.HLP, (this file), to the same directory on your hard disk.

Start Program Manager and open the group you want to launch No Blink with Date/Time from. ("StartUp" is recommended). Now select File|New to create a new item and use the Browse command to locate NOBLINKT.EXE. No Blink with Date/Time is now ready to run. You may wish to customise the font, font size and the format of the date and time displayed: to do so you add command line options after the path and name of the program in the Command Line section. (See Options.) No Blink with Date/Time can only be terminated by selecting it in Task Manager and choosing End Task.

Uninstalling

Simply delete the No Blink files from their directory and their entries in the Program Manager group.


Compatibility

These programs run under Windows and require the Visual Basic runtime library VBRUN300.DLL, obtainable from the same source as the No Blink programs.

Neither program changes WIN.INI or any of your other files.

These programs work with Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups 3.x, Windows NT and Windows '95 beta, and with all applications which follow Microsoft's rules. (Sadly this means that the caret in Word versions 2 and 6 will continue blinking - Microsoft don't appear to follow their own rules: if you dislike blinking cursors why not ask Microsoft to provide a "No Blink" option in Control Panel's Desktop.)