Instructions for Twistory 1.3
"Twistory" is a history browser. It displays the lifetimes and travels of historical figures, and dates and locations of historical events. It is a tool for keeping track of when and where things happened, and their relationships to each other. It is meant to provide a way to keep track of the multitude of different peoples, dynasties, empires and developments throughout history. It answers questions like, "What else was happening in the world at that time?" and "Did A live at the same time as B, or before?" A resource of over 1600 people, events and places is included. The database has an open text format, so that more historical information can be added by any user. A complete description of the file format is included.
The two main windows are the time-line window, which shows lives and events against a variable time scale, and the map window, which shows people and events in their geographic locations during an interval of time. There is also a genealogy window which shows the ancestors and descendants of the selected person, and an info window that shows additional details about the person or event. A "This Day in History" window lists all milestones occurring on a particular day of the year.
Twistory is a FAT binary, and requires system 7. It uses about 4.5 Mb of disk space, and needs about 2 Mb of RAM to run comfortably. With a large monitor or with several windows open, 4 Mb is better.
Twistory is $10 (US or CAN) shareware. You may evaluate it for free. If you use it regularly, keep it for more than one month, or use it for presentation to a group, I would enjoy getting a little something for it. If you feel so obliged, you may send the payment to
John de Boer
60-A Lundy's Lane
Kingston, Ontario
Canada, K7K 5G7
If you desire support, please send your e-mail address along, and I will write back.
Registration of Twistory is necessary only once. Once you have paid, you are entitled to use any future release without any condition.
The fee is for use of the application programme, not for the text resources. The resources are drawn from a wide variety of sources, both on the Internet and in print.
If you find any bugs or have suggestions on how to improve Twistory, please e-mail to deboer@king.igs.net or send those comments along with your registration. Twistory is still growing and changing. If you create historical resources for use with Twistory that you feel might be of interest to others, you may send them to me as well, and I will consider including them with the next release of Twistory.
If you want to be certain you have the latest version, you can check out the Twistory Home Page. I will endevour to keep the newest version of Twistory available at that site.
Version History
- Version 1.3
- Menus and certain strings are now in resources, vice hard-coded, to facilitate internationalisation.
- Text can now be copied to the clipboard from Info windows. (Version 1.2 had a "Copy" command, but it didn't do anything.)
- Added the "Show Events Associated with Shown People" option.
- Added delete-key function.
- Fixed a bug that caused a crash if the option "Filter by Map Visibility" was selected, and the Time-Line window was subsequently closed.
- Fixed a bug that made it unable to print. (The "Save as PICT" submenu was placed in error beside the "Print..." item in the File menu.)
- Version 1.2
- Released 1998 Dec 21.
- Introduced user-defined "People" and "Events" menus, including full control over occupation and event type definitions and their icons.
- Added a Find function.
- Fixed some inconsistencies that earlier versions had in displaying voyages on the map.
- Version 1.1
- Released 1998 Aug 19.
- "...many enhancements, and a few bug fixes."
- Able to print directly to printer. (Previous versions had only a "Save as PICT..." command.)
- Version 1.0 FAT
- Released 1998 Jun 4.
- FAT binary.
- Version 1.0 PPC
- Released 1998 May 9.
- Original release. PowerPC code only.