This document likes to be opened in SimpleText with the Palatino and Times fonts installed. Note that items in bold in paragraphs are the names of files/folders/programs. Underlined phrases are terms defined in the "Vocabulary" section.
This software is copyrighted material and therefore you are not allowed to modify this software or its documentation in any way, shape or form, nor can you sell it for your own profit. See the Distribution section for more information.
Contents:
Future version features
Cost/fee and registration
Distribution
Contacting the author
Disclaimer
Acknowledgements
Version history
• Future version features:
If you have an idea for a feature you'd like to see, why not write and let us know about it? I love comments about my stuff: positive and especially negative (yeah, right!). So if something's eating you, don't hesitate to write!
• Cost/fee and registration:
Virtual is shareware. This means that you can freely copy the unregistered version of the software and try it out before you pay anything. If you decide to continue using this software after 30 days, you are obliged to register it by sending in the registration form and registration fee.
Note that this version is fully functional - there are no locked out or missing features. Until you register, Virtual will bring up a registration reminder day.
How to register: there are two ways you can register, and you can choose the most convenient for you. If it makes no difference to you, I like the first one better, because I get one more dollar per registration…
• Through Kagi Shareware: use the included Register application. This methods allows you to use cash (many currencies are supported), check, credit card (so you can register by fax or email) and a few other methods.
• If you can't or don't want to use Kagi, you can also send me cash (either $US 10, or FrenchF 50) or a check (either drawn on an American bank, or a French bank, or a Euro-Cheque, for the same amount) at the following address:
Pierre-Luc Paour
99, rue de la Republique
13980 Alleins
France
In this case, remember to include your address, email address if you have one, full name, and the version of Virtual you have (so I can tell you how to get more recent versions if yours is a little old). Also, if you are registering a translated version (German, French or Japanese), be sure to mention it, as the translators get a small fee for each registration in their language. Be warned that while Kagi handles your registrations in under 24 hours usually, it will take me much longer.
Upgrade policy: all registered users of past versions of Virtual are automatically registered for the latest version whenever I release it. Registered users that gave me an email address will receive a notification by mail whenever a significant newer version is released.
• Distribution:
The Virtual package may be distributed freely, but it must remain in its unmodified entirety. It can be put on disks and CD-ROMs that charge a reasonable fee for the cost of distributing it. I would appreciate a copy each of any such disks or CD-ROMs so that I know what it is being distributed on, but it is not a necessity. I do require that you advise me first before distributing Virtual on a CD-Rom. Thank you.
I also ask that you contact me about the latest version so that only that version is distributed. The latest version is always available at this internet World Wide Web location:
http://www.kagi.com/paour/
• Contacting the author:
The author, Pierre-Luc Paour, can be reached by sending e-mail to <paour@kagi.com>, which currently gets forwarded to my regular address of <paour@ncsa.uiuc.edu> here at NCSA, University of Illinois, USA.
If you're bored you can also check out my WWW homepage:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/paour/VirtualF/
My permanent snail mail address is:
Pierre-Luc Paour
99, rue de la Republique
13980 Alleins
France
As of July 1997, I will be looking for work. I have the French equivalent of a Master's in Computer Science and Networking. I am also an experienced Mac programmer. I am currenly developping multimedia applications for the Internet at the National Center for Supercomputing and Applications. If you think I might be of some use to your company, please get in touch with me. I like to travel and wouldn't mind relocating to anywhere in the USA or Europe.
• Disclaimer:
All copyrights are property of their respective holders.
This software is provided as-is. The author cannot be held responsible of any damage it might cause. There is no warranty, express or implied. Blah blah blah…
• Acknowledgements:
• Michael Hecht, for the interface to the Layer Manager used by Virtual.
• Matt Slot, for his 'appe' Windows code, and Guillaume Lessard, for porting it to CodeWarrior and making it PPC native.
• Troy Gaul, for permission to use Infinity Windoid.
• Dair Grant, for the ColourBlock CDEF.
• Todd Clements for his Dialog Control source code.
• Robert S. Mah for HotKeys.
• François Stragier, Gauthier Houël, Arnaud "Nons'" Mouronval and Robert K. Walker, for their beta-testing efforts and ideas.
• Ammon Skidmore, for some useful tips, and for permission to use the same layout for this document as what he used for his ReadMe files for his Extensions Strip package (he in turn was inspired by documents by Vincent Tan, for Control Strip Menu).
• Jon Klein for giving me some highly illegal mouse-moving code, and asking me to use it in Virtual.
• Pi (his name is better left unsaid ;-) for proof-reading this and nagging me te rewrite it in the first place.
• And Kee Nethery for founding Kagi Shareware…
• My roommate, Greg, for being so patient (and asleep) during those long sleepless nights.
• Version history:
1.6.1 (February 23, 1997): Fixed (again) floating windows compatibility. Improved multiple monitor support (thanks to Matt Elliott and Brad Viviano, who lent me a video card). Improved mouse-switching: made the delay longer and added a visual clue (arrow cursors).
1.6 (February, 1997): Lots of improvements: Completely new, faster, cleaner way of tracking windows. More compatible way to jump to a window (when you click in the respresentation of a window), whick corrects long standing conflicts with all PowerPlant applications (Netscape, CodeWarrior, eXodus). New window color for the frontmost window. All characters (including accented) are now defined in the tiny font. Named virtual screens (option-click on the the back of the screen to set name). Better recognition of floaters. Even floaters not recognized by Aaron should be recognized by Virtual. Virtual barks when you dog an application, instead of beeping. Improved stability when a lot of things happen at the same time (Virtual used to crash randomly sometimes). Virtual will now remind the user to register every day, instead of every 7 days. Better handling of multiple-display setups. More compatibility with Office.
1.5.2 (June 12, 1996): Corrected a few bugs with the non-floating mode, which I always forget to test, because I don't use it. My beta tester told me about these bugs just minutes after I sent the archive to MacGifts! The mouse-switching should be as fast as in 1.2.5 (almost: in some cases 1.2.5 was too fast). Also, you can now press the command key after starting to drag a window to another screen to constrain movement, and the constrained movement works better (the window is now actually moved to the screen you drop it on). Also corrected a wierd bug with the about box.
1.5.1 (April 2, 1996): Finally found a way to positively identify Infinity Windowid floaters. Floating windows that do not use the Infinity WDEF will not be recognized as floaters (instead, you can make them sticky if they have a name). Floaters are now treated as always sticky. Fixed the disapearing window problem. Also, Virtual no longer warns you if TSM Fix is not installed.
1.5 (March 31, 1996): I thought I would be able to get the next version done by March… As of 1.5, Virtual is a FAT application (finally)! In fact, 1.5 is a major rewrite, to make Virtual cleaner and more stable. Introduced VirtualStrip, a companion Control Strip Module (also FAT). Few new features: added code to move the mouse pointer when you use the mouse to switch screens and an option to disable Virtual's activation the main application for the screen you switch to.
1.2.5 (December 19, 1995): You can now drag and drop documents as well as applications. Thanks to Ammon Skidmore for pointing out the jGNE filter bug, which is now corrected (if you used to experience conflicts between Virtual and other utilities using system-wide floating windows, chances are they're fixed). Fixed some problems with mouse-switching. Tweaked the way Show/Hide works. If you hold the control key while dragging a window (but after starting to click on it) to another virtual screen, Virtual will switch to that screen.
1.2.4 (November 21, 1995): added a few features:
• drag-and-drop an application on a virtual screen to open it there
• ability to switch between virtual screens by placing the mouse on the edge of the screen
• Virtual now remembers which application was active in each screen and will make that application active when you return to that screen
• fixed incompatibility with Netscape 2. You should undog Netscape if you had it dogged.
• fixed some Word 5 conflicts (the problem described in the "List of known problems" remains). There may be conflicts with Word 6, I wouldn't know…
• added ability to use a background picture or background texture. You have to use ResEdit to change the picture (PICT resource, ID=1000) or pattern (ppat resource, ID=1000). The picture has precedence over the pattern. If there is enough demand, I'll add this to the preferences dialog to make it more friendly.
• redid the docs from scratch!
• and fixed a few problems. Most notably, the floating palettes should now always appear in your screen if VirtualDog is installed. Of course, this is a shaky workaround (it's kind of hard to tell if a window is a palette or not when you're a dumb program looking at other program's windows…), so it might not work with some programs (Photoshop 3).
1.2.3 (October 11, 1995): Added a 'No title bar' mode for people with real small screens, and a 'slow' setting to the Hot Corner, for people who kept bringing Virtual to the front by accident. Corrected the crashing problem in VirtualDog, as well as many mistakes in 1.2.2.
1.2.2 (September 30, 1995): Added a zoom box to allow switching between two sizes for the Virtual window. Added an option to ignore all hot-keys. Made Virtual compatible with extensions that forbid use of temporary memory.
1.2.1 (September 24, 1995): The cursor now properly turns to an arrow over Virtual. Virtual now works almost properly with applications that hide the menu bar (screen savers that don't use Gestalt). Fixed some long standing bugs and leaks. Memory management is now safer.
1.2 (September 22, 1995): Added the VirtualDog extension that patches _ShowHide in order to force windows to open in user-selected virtual screens. Changed the way Virtual remembers its window's position to work better across screen-size
changes on multiscan monitors (this may introduce wierd effects on multiple-screen setups, but I have no way to test this). Corrected misc bugs. I am no longer commited to having Virtual run native as of version 1.2 ;-). Compiled with CW 7.
1.1.4 (July 17, 1995): Fixed the registration bug introduced in 1.1.1. Fixed the conflict with extensions that change the system font. Fixed some bugs in the prefs dialogs. This version was confidentially and incorrectly released as 1.2 (I'm commited to having Virtual run native for version 1.2). Added "Virtual Click Modifiers Quick Reference" in the Help menu.
1.1.3 (June 9, 1995): More bugs and incompatibilities fixed.
1.1.2 (May 30, 1995): More bugs and incompatibilities fixed. Added option to send Virtual in the background after it has loaded.
1.1.1 (May 29, 1995): Fixed an old and nasty bug where Virtual could crash if there were no windows on screen, compiled with CW 6.
1.1 (May 28, 1995): Rewrote the preferences dialog, adding the ability to use custom key combinations to change screens, etc. Added optional resize corner to make it easier to change the size of the Virtual window. Optional larger font for window names.
1.03 (May 18, 1995): Fixed a bug where an application would put up an alert way offscreen because it was confused and Virtual would be unable to jump to it (SimpleText, for example). Added the ability to move a window to the same place on another screen. Fixed some bugs. Added a check so that when a window is moved, its title can no longer be placed under the menu bar. Now function-keys 1 through 15 can be used to jump to another window (what kind of a sick user has 15 screens?).
1.02 (May 17, 1995): Bug fix version. Added a menu to put all windows back on Virtual when something screwd up. Miscellaneous fixes. Fixed some interface bugs in the 'Jump-to-Window' dialog, including a conflict with The Tilery. Added code to disable all access to the Virtual window while there is a modal window in the front of the screen, because it could cause problems and made the modal window not-so-modal… As a result, the standard file dialogs shortcuts with cmd-arrows work once again.
1.01 (May 16, 1995): Bug fix version. Made Virtual compatible with System 7, although floating still requires 7.1. Fixed some interface bugs in the 'Jump-to-Window' dialog, including a conflict with Stickies. Increased default memory partition. Started using cmd-F1 to cmd-F12 to switch virtual screens. Additionnal bug fixes.
1.0 (May 15, 1995): First 'final' release. Almost completely rewritten from version 0.9. Added floating windows and too many other features to remember.
0.9 (April 1995): Original beta release. Intended to test the interest for further developpement.
