PIC V2.00e Notes and Revision History

July 5, 1995
    Smaller PIC Footprint
    ---------------------
    Rick Hullinger e-mailed me to ask whether it would be possible to
    reduce the total height of the PIC button bar to just the height
    of the buttons. He also asked to be able to put this single button
    row at the very top of the display.  Well, why not?  It seemed like
    a great idea to me so this version implements his suggestion.  The
    general idea is that PIC shrinks to one row high when it is not
    active by hiding its caption bar.  When you move the cursor over it,
    PIC wakes up and goes back to two rows high.  This allows it to take
    up even less space on the display except when actually being used.

    The blue-on-gray version tag that replaces the unused buttons is
    not present in the REGISTERED version, so PIC often uses EVEN
    LESS screen space than what you will see in the evaluation copy.

    Balloon Label Visibility
    ------------------------
    The button labels that identify the command lines for buttons as
    you pass the mouse cursor over the PIC buttons now display above
    the buttons if PIC is located at the bottom of the screen.

    Bugs
    ----
    Due to a faulty mouse driver initalization in PIC, some users 
    experienced complete loss of mouse capability in Windows after
    running PIC.  This problem, which did not show up on our original
    test systems, has been fixed.  This a particulary frustrating 
    kind of bug for an inexperienced user to encounter.  My sincere
    appologies to anyone who had to contend with this problem.

    
    Fixed the "Discard all changes?" message in "Modify Buttons..."
    to also be displayed when positions of buttons or button sets are
    exchanged.

    Errata
    ------
    Corrected a button label error in the the on-line help: "Files..."
    was erroneously called "Dir...".

June 20, 1995
    This version of PIC contains a significant revision to the
    "Always On Top" command avaliable on the PIC system menu so
    that it can set other windows and icons in addition to PIC
    to also be "Always On Top".  There is a very popular utility
    that has found its way to many BBS's that provides nothing
    but this single function!

    The only restriction is that you need to be using a mouse or
    compatible pointing device to be able to use this extension
    to "Always On Top".  However, it seems to be much more natural
    and intuitive to point and click a window that you want to
    place on top (this is the way PIC does it) rather than to use
    a control character (which might be preempted for other uses
    by some other Windows program) to accomplish the same effect.

    Bugs
    ----
    Found and fixed cosmetic errors on the Order screen including,
    multiple on-screen copies of the order form, an overhang in
    the order form text and fixed the site license calc function
    to prevent it from requesting acceptance of a price break
    multiple times.

    Fixed another bug causing program manager to re-spawn its
    startup programs when PIC was uninstalled as shell.  This is
    a continuation of the fix of Bug 2 below but in a different
    mode.

June 15, 1995
    Bug 1
    -----
    Alas, no sooner was PIC placed on the board than a user
    immediately encountered a problem when attempting to
    use PIC with a shell other than Program Manager. Although
    we had not intended to have PIC used with other shells, to
    assume that PIC would not be used with other shells is
    definitely a bug and caused problems. This version should
    correct the problem by providing the following:

      1. If WIN.INI or SYSTEM.INI are changed by PIC, a backup
         will always be saved first (WIN.BAK or SYSTEM.BAK).

      2. PIC will always ask permission before adding any
         changes to either WIN.INI or SYSTEM.INI.

      3. Neither of these INI files will be changed by PIC unless
         it absolutely needs to be changed. A gratuitious write
         of PROGMAN.EXE to SYSTEM.INI "shell=" is what actually
         caused the bug mentioned above because it removed the
         original shell path.

      4. The only time that PIC will ever change the "shell=" entry
         in SYSTEM.INI is if a user installs PIC as the new shell.
         In this case, the old shell path will be saved and can be
         recovered by using any of the other "PIC Setup" commands
         described in the PIC online help.

      5. Both README.TXT and the PIC online help describe the exact
         changes made to WIN.INI (See "PIC Setup" in the online help)
         and SYSTEM.INI (See "Shell Operation" in the online help).

    We still don't know how well PIC will work with other shells, but
    at the very least, it should do no harm to try.  If the results
    are bad, the PIC command (typed in the "Run..." box from the
    PIC system menu):
                        pic /uninstall

    will remove any changes to INI files.  If results are really bad,
    running the REMOVE.EXE utility provided with PIC will take it off
    your system!

    Thanks, Phil, for the suggestions implemented above and accept my
    sincere apologies for the problem we caused you!

    Bug2
    ----
    Also fixed a related bug causing program manager to re-spawn its
    startup programs when PIC was uninstalled as shell.


June 11, 1995

    I think you will agree that the new version of PIC has a much
    cleaner and more attractive user interface than PIC V1.00.
    In addition, PIC has several new features including, direct
    selection of command items from Program Manager groups,
    "Always on Top" and the ability to place PIC anywhere and have
    the new location restored on re-entry to Windows.

    Some of these and other features were suggested by users who
    were kind enough to e-mail me some comments on the program.
    Thanks quys!

    You will also find that PIC updates its display much faster, and
    behaves much more solidly in every other way that we could think
    of.  Numerous bugs were fixed.

    PREVIOUS USERS
    If you are a user of the previous version of the program please
    be sure to read the appropriate sections of the README.TXT file
    that explain how to keep your previous button configuration. All
    that is actually required is to locate and rename your PIC.INI
    file and to move it into your Windows directory.  See README.TXT
    for the details.

PIC V1.00c Notes

    In this and future versions, the default PIC.INI file will be
    renamed to correspond to the version number, e.g. PICC.INI, to
    avoid over-writing someone's existing PIC.INI file and getting
    them really mad at us.  If a PIC.INI file is found, that file
    will be used.  Otherwise, the supplied PICx.INI will be renamed
    to PIC.INI and used instead.  If you have your own PIC.INI file,
    you can delete PICx.INI.  It will probably contain nothing new.
    If it does, we'll let you know.

March 20, 1995

    Resource Monitor
    ----------------
    The "Free Resources" menu function has been revised to include
    a test that determines the amount of free fast RAM.  This test
    is described in more detail in the PIC on-line Help.  But you
    may be wondering why we bother with such a test.  Well, there
    are at least two good reasons that we are aware of:

    First, you may want to know how much of that expensive RAM
    that you added to your system is actually being made available
    to Windows applications.  Without a test like this, it is
    difficult to tell how much is being reserved by DOS or being
    tied up in RAM drives and disk cache.  By knowing how much is
    actually available, you have the information you need to tune
    your system for best performance.

    Second, certain kinds of applications need fast memory.  Hand
    scanners, for example, are improving by leaps and bounds and
    becoming very inexpensive.  But those high-resolution images
    sure do need a lot of memory.  I recently purchased a little
    800 dpi, 256 gray level gem for less than a hundred dollars
    that provides outstanding performance on small images.  When
    I tried to scan in a larger image I immediately ran into a
    problem.  The scanner balked after scanning in only part of the
    image.  At first, I thought it was bug in the scanner.  Then
    I noticed that the hard disk light was on.  What was happening
    was that the image bytes were being sent to the hard disk and
    the slowdown was so great that I was unable to move the scanner
    slowly enough across the page to produce an acceptable
    result.

    To make a long story short, of the 8 Meg of fast RAM available
    on my system, substantially less was available to the scanner.
    In fact, it turns out that the actual amount of available fast
    RAM is highly variable and can change considerably from moment
    to moment.  Because of its virtual memory management scheme,
    Windows does not give client programs the option of getting only
    high-speed RAM.  If a previous program has cluttered up the RAM
    space, Windows simply starts providing the memory requests from
    hard disk.  Eventually Windows increases the amount of available
    fast RAM.  But in the meantime, applications get trashed.

    The PIC fast RAM test provides a nice solution to this problem
    by both testing for available fast RAM and by coercing Windows
    into increasing the currently available fast RAM.  For my hand
    scanner, all I need to do now is to run the PIC "Free Resources"
    test just before I begin a scan to insure that I have enough
    space available.

    PIC as a Windows Shell
    ----------------------
    PIC now has full shell capability and can be installed as a
    Program Manager replacement.  The main reason for doing this
    is to recover the resource space consumed by Program Manager
    on systems where a lot of program groups have been created.
    It appears that by the time you get to 30 program groups,
    almost 20 percent of the available USER space is being used by
    Program Manager.  The reason for this is that Program Manager
    opens an additional window for each program group that it has
    created.  The space for all of these windows comes out of the
    USER module and reduces available USER space that is shared by
    all programs.

    The space situation gets progressively worse as more program
    groups are added.  Since the only advantage to having Program
    Manager active (even as an icon) is saving the reload time when
    you are constantly using it, it makes more sense to run it only
    as needed in cases where you want to reserve the resource space
    for more important applications.

    If it doesn't already have it, be sure to add a Program Manager
    (progman.exe) button to your Win Main group in PIC.  That way,
    if you decide to run PIC as a shell, you will still be able to
    run Program Manager when you need it.

    File Associations from File Manager
    -----------------------------------
    File associations assigned in File Manager are also now used by
    PIC if not explicitly configured in PIC.

    Swapping Groups and Tool Commands
    ---------------------------------
    Added the ability to swap (interchange) Groups and Tool Commands
    from the menus and updated the Help and menu prompts to reflect
    this change.

    Bugs
    ----
    A leading space entered in front of a group name no longer
    causes the group to be deleted in "Change menu ..." etc.

    Duplicated button icons are no longer saved to the INI file.

    Fixed a bug causing the '*' operator to work incorrectly in
    Command Edit.

    Fixed a bug causing "invalid file" error on reload after an
    obscure file operation.

March 8, 1995
    Revised file association and filter handling to allow
    full configurability.  Although a default set of
    filters is provided, these can now be replaced or revised.

    The shareware version of the program will support up
    to six simultaneous filters or associations.  The
    registered version will allow up to fifty.

    A confirmation message is displayed when a filter or
    association is changed, added or deleted.

    Revised the help file and added more on-line messages.

    Fixed another icon bug. 

Feb 28, 1995
    Added ability to select groups with letter keys.

    Fixed a bug causing icons to be scrambled when a group
    was removed.

Feb 24, 1995
    Converted floating button labels to small character set.

    Fixed a bug causing incorrect installation into WIN.INI.

R.C.
