Contents:
The reader has probably gathered by now that the Quoteriser is a program for managing quotes. If not, the author can only presume that the reader has downloaded this file for no particular purpose and hopes that the reader is not volume-charged on his or her Internet access.
The Quoteriser was written in the author's spare time to facilitate the maintenance of the author's collection of quotes. The author hopes that others might similarly find use for this program in the maintenance of their own collections or to use as a browser for quote libraries.
In addition to being able to store, edit, search and view quotes, the Quoteriser can similarly manage biographical details for authors. Indeed, the user can even do away with the quotes altogether and use the application purely as a biographical database manager.
Also provided is a quote-of-the-day facility, and a powerful random signature generator (i.e. a quote-of-the-day inserted into the reader's e-mail signature).
Typesetting of quotes and biographies is achieved using simple HTML encoding.
The Quoteriser is traditionally an OS/2 Presentation Manager application, and you will need to be using OS/2 to use the full gamut of Quotersier functions. As of Version 2.10, however, some Quoteriser functions are available for any platform that has an ANSI C compiler and the GNU GDBM library. There is no official binary distribution for systems other than OS/2, however, so non-OS/2 users will have to compile it themselves (or find someone else who already has).
Version 2.00 of the Quoteriser is a large improvement over version 1.00, with a much better interface, several new features and a couple of minor bug-fixes. Version 2.10 contains a few interface enhancements and a new (somewhat experimental) database compiler. If the reader is interested in the details, the author has compiled an history of changes.
More detailed information about how to use the Quoteriser and the facilities it has been endowed with is available in the accompanying documentation:
Of course, since you're reading this document, one presumes that you know where it came from. In case you've forgotten, or obtained the Quoteriser through strange and obscure channels, I will upload new versions of the Quoteriser to Hobbes, which the administrators, in their great wisdom, place in the os2/apps/misc directory.
There are other mirrors - see mirrors.txt on ftp-os2.nmsu.edu; as usual, choose
the one nearest (network-wise) to you.
The central point for the dissemination of information about the Quoteriser is on the author's WWW site, http://www.zeta.org.au/~nps/software/quoteriser/index.html. Go here for the latest Quoteriser information and URLs of publically-available databases.
This assumes that the reader is installing the Quoteriser from the binary
distribution (quot210x.zip); if the reader is using the source
distribution, please read the Do-it-yourself executables
section below.
The quot210x.zip file, when expanded (with -d if using PKZIP), automatically creates the directory structure assumed by the Quoteriser - the reader has probably already done this. The files are:
install.cmd | - cheesy script for installing icons |
readme.txt | - tells the reader to read this file |
bin\quoter.exe | - the Quoteriser's main program |
bin\quoterc.exe | - the database compiler |
bin\qotd.exe | - the quote-of-the-day program |
bin\quoterdb.dll | - supporting library |
bin\quoterla.dll | - supporting library |
bin\quoter1.dll | - supporting library |
bin\sig.exe | - the random signature generator |
doc\copying.txt | - a copy of the GNU General Public License |
doc\intro.htm | - an introduction to the Quoteriser (this file) |
doc\quoter.htm | - documentation for the main program |
doc\quoterc.htm | - documentation for the database compiler |
doc\qotd.htm | - documentation for the quote-of-the-day program |
doc\sig.htm | - documentation for the random signature generator |
doc\history.txt | - history of changes made to the Quoteriser |
etc\quoter.ico | - the Quoteriser icon |
The reader will probably want to create icons on the desktop to start up
quoter.exe (the interface to the database manager) and
qotd.exe (the quote-of-the-day program). This can be done
automatically by running the install.cmd script from the
Quoteriser's directory. Put a shadow of the Quote-of-the-day object in
the StartUp folder for a random quote to be displayed at every boot.
If the user decides to move the Quoteriser, the other file that will need to be
moved is bin\QUOTER.INI. This contains the settings information for
the Quoteriser. It is created by the Quoteriser main program when it needs it.
The random signature generator uses two environment variables, which the reader
might want to set in his or her CONFIG.SYS if the signature
generator is to be used regularly. These are:
| QUOTER_QDB | - path to the quote database to get random quotes from, no extension (must exist) |
| QUOTER_ADB | - path to the author database to use, no extension (optional) |
Should the reader decide that the Quoteriser is absorbing too much valuable disk space, or it is banned in the reader's country (?), or something of the sort, uninstalling the Quoteriser is as easy as installing it. Simply delete everything in the directory the Quoteriser was installed into, and all the directories below it. Delete any icons or folders that were created, and the reader's system will never know that it was ever there: "rm -rf *" - the ultimate uninstaller.
The complete C source code for this version of the Quoteriser is available to the compiling public. If the reader wishes to compile his or her own version of the Quoteriser, he or she requires three files (these are the names of the OS/2 distributions; other systems may have variants, such as *.tar.gz for Unix):
quot210s.zip - the Quoteriser's source code
gnugdbm.zip - the GNU database manager
gnurx.zip - the GNU Rx (regular expression) library; though any other
regular expression library that happens to be lying around can probably
be made to work. This is not required for non-OS/2 compilation.
The Quoteriser source code should be available from the same source as the
executables (quot210x.zip). The GNU database files are available from
ftp.leo.org and several other places (all in Germany, for some reason),
and the GNU Rx library is available from Hobbes, amongst other places.
It is a condition of the license for this product that the source code is either distributed with the executables or available upon request. The author will, therefore, be prepared to offer any assistance necessary in obtaining the above two files if he is contacted by any rightful licensee of the product.
Further documentation on compilation of the source code is distributed in the
quot210s.zip file.
The author will accept suggestions and feature requests to his e-mail address at
nps@zeta.org.au. Whether or not he acts on
them, and on what time scale, depends on how worthwhile he thinks the feature to
be and how much time he has on his hands. If the reader wishes to fiddle with the
source code him or herself, he or she is quite welcome to download
quot210s.zip and do so. The author will consider changes submitted
to him for inclusion in the official Quoteriser distribution, though he can't
guarantee it.
The author of the Quoteriser is Nicholas Paul Sheppard. He lives in Sydney, Australia and does not tolerate advertising material posted to his e-mail address.
E-mail: nps@zeta.org.au
WWW: http://www.zeta.org.au/~nps
The Quoteriser's quote and biography database management is handled by the GNU database manager library. This was written by Philip A. Nelson and ported to OS/2 by Kai Uwe Rommel. Without this piece of software, the Quoteriser would have been a lot longer in coming.
The Quoteriser's regular expression matching is provided by the GNU Rx library, written by Tom Lord and ported to OS/2 by Kai Uwe Rommel. This library allowed easy addition of a powerful Quoteriser feature.
The Quoteriser was developed using the EMX/GCC compiler, written by Eberhard Mattes. This author cannot offer enough thanks to Eberhard and everyone else who's contributed to GCC; the Quoteriser would probably not exist but for them.
The Quoteriser icon was designed and drawn by John Bambrick, who also came up
with the name "Quoteriser".
Legals
The Quoteriser is distributed under the GNU General Public License; the file copying.txt describes this license. If you did not get this file with your copy of the Quoteriser, (a) you have a faulty copy of the distribution, and (b) you can get a copy by e-mailing the author with a polite request for its supply or by contacting the Free Software Foundation (try http://www.gnu.org).