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- M O V I E G U I D E A M I G A
- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-
- V2.0 (x/7-1994)
-
-
-
- Welcome to MovieGuide AMIGA
- ===========================
-
- - Your guide to the movies!
-
- * MORE THAN 16.000 TITLES SO FAR, CONTAINING TITLE, DK TITLE, DIRECTOR
- CAST, ORIGIN COUNTRY, RELEASE YEAR, GENRE, LENGTH IN MINUTES,
- COLOR OR B&W, NUMBER OF CHAPTERS (SERIES ONLY).
-
- * SEARCH ON DIRECTOR, CAST, TITLE, DK TITLE.
-
- * CROSSSEARCHING: CHOOSE WHICH GENRE AND/OR WHICH COUNTRY(IES), YOU
- WANT TO SEARCH IN.
-
- * NOW ALSO CROSSSEARCHING USING YEAR-CRITERIA.
-
- * NO UNBEARABLE WAITING TIMES. ON AN A4000/030, ALL THE DATA CAN BE
- SEARCHED FOR A TITLE IN APPROX. 4 SECONDS!
-
- * UP-TO-DATE. MANY TITLES FROM 1994 ARE ALREADY IN THERE - MANY OF THEM
- STILL IN PRODUCTION IN THE US! EVEN A COUPLE FROM 1995!
-
- * UPDATING IS HAPPENING ALL THE TIME. MISSING INFORMATION, ERRORS ETC.
- ARE BEEING CORRECTED, AS THEY'RE FOUND.
-
- * PLOT SUMMARIES OF MORE THAN 1000 TITLES - AND MORE ARE COMING!
-
- * YOU DON'T NEED A LOT OF RAM OR HD-SPACE TO RUN THIS PROGRAM. TAKES
- UP 2.8MB HD SPACE, NEEDS 1MB RAM!
-
- * COMPATIBLE WITH ALL EXISTING AMIGAS, INCLUDING A1200 AND A4000!
-
- * UPDATES ARE IN THE WORKS FOR THE NEXT VERSION!
-
- * AMIGA ONLY!
-
- Disclaimer
- ==========
-
-
- THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY
- APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT
- HOLDER AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF
- ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
- IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
- THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH
- YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL
- NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
-
- IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
- WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY REDISTRIBUTE THE
- PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY
- GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE
- USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF
- DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD
- PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS),
- EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
- SUCH DAMAGES.
-
-
- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-
-
- What is MovieGuide?
- ===================
-
- MovieGuide is a comprehensive movie-databasesystem for the Amiga
- computer, which helps you get information on the over 16.000 movies
- and TV-series currently in this system.
- It utilises an easy-to-use 'point-and-click' and/or keyboard-controlled
- userinterface, so that most people should be able to familize him/herself
- with the program very quickly.
- Updates will follow, the first one probably beeing plot-descriptions
- for a lot of the titles. Maybe also ratings for most of the titles,
- from the Film and Movie Guide by Mick Martin & Marsha Porter. Later,
- we hope that we'll include Oscar-nominations/Awards for a lot of the
- titles, more credits (e.g. music, editor, cinematographer, writers,
- producers, production/distribution company etc.), and of course
- updates in forms of new titles.
-
-
- MovieGuide Amiga V2.0
- =====================
-
- Congratulations on getting your hands on MovieGuide! We're not sure,
- how widespreaden this program will be, but we hope that it'll get across
- most of Europe - because this is a program the Amigaowners has long
- been cheated not to have - the PC's have had programs like this for
- ages, but to our knowledge this is the first one, with so many titles,
- for the Amiga. We don't know if it'll get to the US, but we hope not,
- as the programme at the moment is PAL only! V2.0 contains various
- upgrades and updates.
-
-
- Copyright
- =========
- While all material is copyrighted by the creators, MovieGuide Amiga
- is FREEWARE. This means that you can copy this programme as crazy
- as you want, AS LONG as you include ALL files, including this doc.
-
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- The MovieGuide
- ==============
-
- The display is split in three general windows, not including the title-
- line.
-
- WINDOW 1: This is where the information about a certain title is
- displayed. The first line in the black window contains the current
- movie's original title. The second one, contains the danish title which,
- for other than danes, is rather uninteresting. The third line contains
- the director(s) of the movie/series, and the fourth and fifth, give you
- a list of the main cast members. The files are getting updated all the
- time, so eventually, most titles will have two lines of cast.
-
- Below the black window are the following icons:
-
- PRINT: Prints the information on the current title to a file or printer.
- COLOR/B&W: Shows whether the movie is shot in B&W or color.
- RATING: Not available yet.
-
- Below these three icons, the films release year, playing time,
- origin (country), genre and, if it's a series, number of chapters
- is displayed.
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- WINDOW 2: This is the middle window, containing most user definable
- options, and the new BROWSER and PLOT icons!
-
- SEARCH FLAGS: Here you decide which type of information, you're looking
- for. E.g. if you set it to CAST, you'll be looking for an actor/actress.
-
- SEARCH STRING: Pretty much selfexplaining, but this is what the program
- will be looking for, in the search flag that you've set above. A quick
- explanation:
-
- WILDCARDS:
- =========
- DIRECTOR AND CAST
- Having set searchflag to DIRECTOR or CAST, you have two
- ways to search for your string.
- 1) No wildcard. Only if EXACTLY what you've typed, is found, the
- title will be listed.
- 2) Wildcard '*' after your searchstring. Alle titles CONTAINING
- your searchstring, in the selected searchcategori, will be listed.
- An example:
- If you've set searchflags to DIRECTOR, and you enter just
- the searchstring, MovieGuide will look after that specific string only.
- If you want it to search for DIRECTORS _CONTAINING_ the searchstring,
- you'll have to put a '*' at the end of the string. E.g. if
- the searchflag is set to DIRECTOR, and the searchstring is
- "Steven Spielberg", it won't find titles such as TWILIGHT ZONE
- and NIGHT GALLERY, because Steven Spielberg is not the only
- director of these titles. If you'd written "Steven Spielberg*"
- however, those two titles would've been found as well.
-
- TITLE AND DK-TITLE
- Here you have three possible ways to search for your string.
- 1) Entering a searchstring with no wildcards, will give you information
- on a title having exactly that name, if it exists.
- 2) Searchstring + '*'. This will list all titles BEGINNING with your
- desired searchstring. THE, AN and A included. An example:
- Searchstring: "The Wild*", will list all titles beginning with
- "The Wild".
- 3) Searchstring + '#'. This wildcard lists all title CONTAINING
- your searchstring. Example:
- Searchstring: "Wild#" will list all titles containing the string "Wild".
- Searchstring: "The Wild#" will list all titles beginning with THE,
- and containing "Wild".
-
- As the above example shows, if your searchstring begins with THE, AN
- or A, no matter if you enter a wildcard or not, the only titles listed,
- will be the ones starting with THE, AN or A.
-
-
- THE, AN and A: All movies are entered in the form: TITLE + ", THE",
- if available. This means that e.g. "The Man Without a Face" is entered
- in the archive as: "Man Without a Face, The". But if you know, the title
- starts with THE, AN or A, you should enter "The Man*" and not "Man, The*"
- etc. You can also just enter "Man*", but this will give you a much longer
- list, as all titles not beginning with THE will appear too.
-
-
- SEARCH GENRE: Here you decide which genre you wish to search in.
- If you hold down the left or right mousebutton for a while, a
- menu will pop up, listing all available genres. If you choose ALL,
- all genres will be searched.
-
- SEARCH COUNTRY: You can choose which countries the program should
- search through. If you know, that the movie you're looking for,
- is French, set this to EUROPE. It's also useful for checking which
- foreign films an actor has starred in.
-
- SERIES ON/OFF: By clicking in the box to the right of SERIES,
- you can tick on and off, if the program should search in the
- SERIES data too. Please notice that many pilot episodes are
- in the main archives, and not the series one, because they've
- been released on video, or for other reasons. Also, be aware that
- if you set SEARCH GENRE to anything but ALL, and you've turned
- series ON, series in all genres will be listed, as many series don't
- belong to any of the standard genres.
- NB! You have to set SEARCH COUNTRY to either USA/UK or ALL, for the
- programme to look in the series archive!
-
- YEAR: This new option, lets you specify a year-mask, so that you
- can choose only to get the information, if a movie is from a given
- period. The following strings are valid, where "XX" marks a
- 2-digit year:
- 19XX: Marks titles from a single year.
- 19XX-: Marks titles from one year and up.
- -19XX: Marks titles up until that year.
- 19XX-19XX: Marks titles from the first year and up till the second.
-
- This option can be combined with GENRE & COUNTRY, and works with all
- search flags.
-
- SORT BY: Below the SEARCH STRING, you'll find the SORT BY icons, which
- determine how the list of films in the bottom window should be sorted.
- You can choose either YEAR, TITLE og GENRE.
-
- FOUND: If a list has been made in the bottom window (window 3), the
- number of titles will be listed here.
-
- PRINT: Pressing this icon, will print out the list at the bottom of
- the screen. For more information see PRINTING.
-
- --------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- WINDOW 3: This is the generated list of titles, falling under the
- set search-criteries. If more than nine titles was found, you can use
- the slider to view the rest. If you click on one of the titles, you'll
- get detailed information about that title in the top window (window 1).
- The marked title will be marked by a grey bare, the TITLE-MARKER.
- You can use the arrow-keys too, to select which movie to view.
- If you've been searching on a cast member, he/she will be printed in
- italic and white colour. Note that an '(S)' at the end of the title,
- indicates series.
-
-
- SEARCHING ON TITLES:
- Some titles, which has been remade several times, e.g. Dracula
- has a YEAR in () after the title, and this means that you have
- to enter the YEAR in (), if you want the programme to find that
- particular title! So, if it doesn't seem like you can find what
- you're looking for, try typing the title only, and you'll get a
- list of all movies with that title, no matter what year it was made.
- Also, titles containing text in "" or '', must be entered that way,
- to be found!
- If you're looking for an original European title, and the program
- can't find it, it may be because we only have the English titles
- on many European - especially Italian - films! Such "Original"
- English titles, are put in (), so if you e.g. want to find the
- Italian movie called "Alien Contamination" in English, you have
- to write "(Alien Contamination)" in the searchstring box, and set
- SEARCH FLAG to TITLE.
- Certain titles has speciel information in () after the title.
- (TVM), (CLIFFHANGER), (COMPUTERCOLOR), (TV MINI SERIES) are among
- the most common. Using a '*' as a wildcard is a pretty safe
- and fast way to search, but if that didn't help you, try using
- '#', e.g. to find movies with more than one title. The James
- Bond movies all starts with (007) for easy localization.
-
-
- SEARCHING ON NAMES:
- Some actors' names, like Daniel Day-Lewis, are very hard to
- guess their spelling, unless you're really into movies. Day-Lewis
- is with a '-', but James Earl Jones is not, and the programme normally,
- will only be looking for the correct way of typing the name. So if your
- way of spelling it doesn't give anything, try loosing the '-', or
- writing part of the name, to check which way it is spelled.
- We've tried to be very acurate, but some errors may have slipped in,
- so if you're sure your spelling is right, and not all titles are
- listed in the bottom window, try using an alternative spelling method.
- If that doesn't help, either the title is not in the archive, or
- the actor is not one of the lead actors in the movie.
-
-
- Release Years
- =============
-
- Comparing the release year information in our database, with
- another source, may reveal differences on many titles. This
- is because many book publishers and magazines, use the
- English release date of a movie, whereas we use, in our opinion,
- the most accurate date, which is the year of release, in the
- country where the film premiered first. E.g. most American
- films opens in the US, most Danish films in DK etc., and that
- is the reference that we use to determine the release year!
-
-
- The Browser
- ===========
-
- Pushing the BROWSE icon in WINDOW 2, brings up the (surprise) browser!
- The browser lets you enter part of a title, and the program will start
- searching for your string immediately, letting you enter more and more
- of the title, narrowing the amount of titles, so it'll be easier to
- quickly find a title, when you're not quite certain what you're looking
- for! In the black box to the left, the genre being searched is
- shown. Pressing the PAUSE-icon, will pause the list, and let you
- click on the desired title. You can of course also let the list finish
- and then click on a title, or close the browser and return to the
- main screen.
-
-
- Plot summaries
- ==============
-
- If a plot summary of a title is available, a PLOT-icon will pop up
- at the right of the screen. Clicking on this icon, will display a
- short summary of the movies plot! Currently they're about 800
- plots in the guide, but more are coming! Important things in the
- text, or actors'/actresses names are marked with a different
- colour. Please try to ignore that some of the marked texts
- are by mistake not in () - we're correcting and adding marked
- texts, so that they're presented in () if they should, and
- not, if the shouldn't! Most of the plot summaries are taken
- from the internet rec.arts.movies files, maintained by
- Colin Tinto <colint@spider.co.uk>.
-
-
- Aborting
- ========
-
- If you've done something wrong, or you just want the searching to
- stop, you can hold down RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON, or press BACKSPACE
- to stop. If you do so while searching with wildcards, a list will
- still be made of the movies found, but it may be incomplete.
-
- Quiting
- =======
-
- At any time, when when the program is awaiting your actions, you can
- quit the program by pressing the ESCAPE key.
-
-
- Printing
- ========
-
- You can make a printout of the information concerning the current
- movie, displayed at the top window. To do so, press the PRINT
- icon, under the top black window. If you choose to print to a
- FILE, the file will have the name of the title, and be saved
- in your "RAM:" device.
- To print out the the list of movies created in the lower window,
- press the PRINT icon, above that window, to the right. If you
- print to a FILE, the file will be placed in "RAM:", and named
- "LIST.TXT"
-
-
- Genres
- ======
-
- The movies are divided into a number of GENRES. While there're
- some movies that'll never fit into a certain genre, we've tried
- to give it the most apropriate label. To keep the programme
- "clean", we've kept the number of genres as low as we think
- it can be justified. Therefore, some genres contains movies which
- aren't always exactly that genre, but a SUBGENRE, that is close to
- the maingenre.
- Here's a list of genres and their SUBGENRES.
-
- ACTION: Action, Thriller, Mystery/Suspence.
- ANIMATED: Animated, Cartoon, Puppet.
- COMEDY: Comedy.
- DOCUMENTARY: Documentary.
- DRAMA: Drama, Erotic.
- FAMILY: Family.
- HORROR: Horror.
- MUSICAL: Musical, Music, Opera, Concert.
- SCIENCE FICTION: Science Fiction, Fantasy.
- WESTERN: Western.
-
-
- OVERVIEW
- ========
- Here's a short overview of the keyboard/mouse short-cuts and wildcards:
-
- WILDCARDS
- ---------
- Wildcard '#': Lists titles CONTAINING your searchstring.
- Wildcard '*': Lists titles BEGINNING with your searchstring.
- No wildcard: Lists titles which has exactly your searchstring,
- in either title, DK-title, director or cast.
-
-
- Arrowkeys
- =========
- LEFT / RIGHT Moves the searchflag cursor left/right.
- UP / DOWN Move title-marker up/down.
-
- Other keys
- ==========
- ESCape - Quits program.
- BACKSPACE - Aborts searching.
-
- Mouse
- =====
- RMB - Pressing the right mousebutton, aborts the searching.
- LMB - Besides moving around the different options, you can press the
- left mousebutton while positioning your pointer over the shown titles
- director, and you'll get a list of that directors work. Pressing
- the button, while over a cast-member (marked in blue), you'll
- get a list of his/her work as a an actor/actress.
-
-
- Examples
- ========
-
- Included on disk 1 is a couple of examples, showing the data
- format we use for the movie titles. These data are in PenPal ASCII
- format! Also included is an example showing the Internet-files
- plot summary-format! Later on, we hope to include a PLOT-editor,
- so that you can write your own plots, and maybe send them
- to us, so that we can make the most complete plot summary
- collection!
-
- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-
- OK, now we think you should run the programme, and play around for
- yourself.
-
- ENJOY!!
-
-
-
- Updates
- =======
- This is what we hope to include later (some are more certain
- than others..read below):
-
- * Even more movies!
- * Extended credits (editor, photographer, producers etc).
- * Biographies (and pictures) on directors/producers/stars etc.
- * Extension-files that can contain special packages of any type
- of movie/cartoon/series etc.
- * More preferences.
- * Real intuition user-interface. Letting you open screens in DblPal
- and Productivity!
- * Ratings.
- * Oscar nominees and winners!
- * Your suggestions!
-
- More and more movies will be entered, longer casts for many
- titles, Oscars and ratings will probably happen in 3.0!
- Maybe even more detailed credits (composer, editor, photographer etc.)
- and pictures from films. Biographies are in the making...
- All suggestions are welcome. Corrections of uncorrect informations,
- spelling etc. in the movies texts are just as welcome.
-
-
- Errors
- ======
-
- If you find any errors, that be incorrect information, wrong spelling,
- or if you can help filling in some of the missing information, you're
- very welcome to send data/bug/error-reports to:
-
- SVEND ERIK POULSEN
- FAARUPVEJ 55
- DK-8410 ROENDE
- DENMARK
-
- Or via FIDO to:
-
- SVEND ERIK POULSEN -- 2:230/813.6 or
- SIMON RAVN -- 2:230/714.13
-
-
- Any suggestions for improvement, are just as welcome, at the same
- addresses.
-
-
- Getting the updates
- ===================
-
- We don't have release dates yet, but updates WILL happen. We hope
- to get it out loud and clear, when such an update is happening,
- but if you think it's been a long time, since you got your copy
- of MovieGuide, you're welcome to write and get the newest version.
- Just send stamps and SAE to:
-
-
- SVEND ERIK POULSEN
- FAARUPVEJ 55
- DK-8410 ROENDE
- DENMARK
-
- or
-
- SIMON RAVN
- FREDERIKSSUNDSVEJ 193A, 3. TV
- DK-2700 BRH.
- DENMARK
-
- All donations are of course welcome to the same address;-)
-
-
- History
- =======
-
- V1.0 - Never released.
- V1.2 - Full working version. Not released.
- V1.21 - Release date: 2/4-1994. Faster search routines. Ugly bug
- fixed. Tested for 2 days.
- V2.0 - * Browsing added
- * Plot descriptions added
- * More titles, bugs fixed, faster searching on title.
- * Year-option added at last minute!
-
- Bugs
- ====
-
- V1.21: None that we're aware of! But they're probably there!
- V1.22: Bug removed!!
- V2.0: None - we THINK. Otherwise we wouldn't be releasing it,
- would we?
-
-
- Thanks To
- =========
- Bo Bennedsen - for BBS-support and testing!
- Asbjørn Nielsen - for the icons.
- Commodore Amiga - for making the best computers ever! Even though
- they're not in business anymore!
-
-
- Short 'Universal Studios/Hollywood Pictures' jingle by MeloManiac.
-
-
-
- License
- =======
-
- Permission is granted by the copyright holders to distribute this package,
- providing all the files are unmodified, with all copyright notices intact
- and including all the accompanying documentation.
-
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-