*** Quoter installation and use instructions. ***

"Quoter" is Copyright (c) 1997, P. Lutus. All rights reserved.

"Quoter" is freely distributable as CareWare. Please read about CareWare at http://www.arachnoid.com/careware.

"Quoter" is an animated Java display of quotes. The appearance of the applet can be controlled in many ways described below. The installer can modify or replace the default quote set.

The displayed quote refreshes after a settable time delay, but the visitor can change the quote immediately by clicking the applet.

The standard package includes these files:

quoter.class
quotes.txt
installation.txt (this file)

The quoter.class file contains the Java program that displays the quotes.
The quotes.txt file contains the data for the quotes and can be replaced by the user.

*** Simple Installation

1. Place the class files (quoter.class and quotes.txt) in your site directory.
2. In the hosting page, create an applet tag such as that shown below:

<applet
code=quoter.class
    name=quoter
    width=500
    height=300 >
<param name="bgcolor" value="#8080ff">
</applet>

3. You may wish to add optional "param" definitions (like the one shown above) to control the appearance of the applet - none are required. See below for details.

*** Customization

For each parameter, write a definition such as that shown above with a name and a value -- <param name="bgcolor" value="#8080ff"> -- and place it in the applet tag as shown in the example above. Each name must be in lowercase.

Here is a list of all the optional user-definable parameters, with the name listed first followed by the default value and a description:

Name: fontsize. Default Value: 24.

This parameter controls the point size of the font used in the display. Obviously, if you use too large a font size, your quotes will not display fully in the chosen applet size. Test each quote you intend to use after selecting an applet size and a font size.

Name: fontname. Default Value: TimesRoman.

This parameter chooses the font face name. Unfortunately Java only offers a few fonts - TimesRoman, Helvetica, Courier and Dialog.

Name: Fontstyle. Default Value: plain.

This parameter controls the appearance of the font. Values are plain, bold and italic.

Name: bgcolor. Default Value: #4040c0.

This parameter controls the background color and uses the standard HTML color coding convention. Decent HTML editors allow you to automatically generate a color code using a color dialog (in Arachnophilia, simply point at a color definition and press the right mouse button).

Name: textcolor. Default Value: #ffff80.

This parameter controls the color of the text.

Name: shadowcolor. Default Value: #000000.

This parameter controls the color of the text shadow, if used. See shadowoffset below.

Name: shadowoffset. Default Value: 2.

A value of 0 prevents a text shadow, other positive values create a shadow n pixels to the lower right of the text. The shadow color is set with shadowcolor (above).

Name: vspacing. Default Value: 1.0.

This floating-point parameter controls the vertical spacing between lines of text. It can assume fractional values, such as 1.2.

Name: hspacing. Default Value: 1.0.

This floating-point parameter controls the horizontal spacing between text characters. It can assume fractional values, such as 1.2.

Name: chardelay. Default Value: 50.

This millisecond time parameter controls how long the applet waits between drawing each character.

Name: timedelay. Default Value: 50.

This millisecond time parameter controls how long the applet pauses after drawing the entire quote. The complete time delay is equal to (timedelay * character count) + 5000 milliseconds.

Name: internalmargin. Default Value: 10.

This pixel parameter controls how much internal margin the applet uses, that is, how much space is left at the top, bottom, left and right of the drawn quote.

Name: quotefile. Default value: quotes.txt

This is the name of the quotes text file. You may need to change this name for some reason, but remember that the file must be located in the same directory as the quoter applet.

One reason to specify this name is to have more than one set of quotes and just one copy of the quoter applet. You might want to call the quoter applet from various pages on your site, specifying different quote files for each.

Name: intranet. Default value: false

If set true, the intranet option prevents a bug that may come up if your copy of Quoter is running on a pure intranet without Internet access. 

*** Creating or Editing Quotes

This section explains how to create your own quote set or edit the existing default quote set.

The Quoter applet uses a plain text file for its quotes. You may edit this file with any convenient text editor, but remember  -- when you upload it to your Internet server, you must use ASCII transfer mode.

quotes.txt internal format


Here is basic internal format of the quotes file:

quote text 1\n\n>- author 1
quote text 2\n\n>- author 2

This example shows two quotes (meaningless ones) and two authors. Notice that each quote appears on a single line with its author. If the quote is long, simply allow your editor to wrap the line around, do not press the Enter key. Also, you may use the default quotes.txt file for an example.

There are some special characters in the quotes.txt file you will need to know. The symbol "\n" creates a linefeed, which means a break between lines of text. Use as many as you wish. I use two between the quote and the attribution line, but this is a matter of taste.

Another special character is the ">" in the above examples. This formatting character, if placed at the beginning of a new line, is not displayed - instead it moves the line over to the right margin. The other characters of this kind are "<" which moves to the left margin (the default) and "^" which moves to the center.

Once one of these formatting characters has appeared at the beginning of a line, its effect is carried over to subsequent lines until another formatting character appears. Therefore, you can choose to have a centered quote with an attribution against the left margin, as in this example:

"^a rose by any other name\nwould smell as sweet\n\n<- Shakespeare"

Because the effect of "^" is carried over between lines, both the quote lines are centered. Notice the "\n" characters, which create line breaks, and the "<" formatting character, which places the attribution line on the left margin.

*** Support

Apart from the contents of this file, there really isn't any support. This is because I have to choose between developing applets like this, an activity that benefits many people, or answering individual questions, which may or may not benefit one person. This is an easy choice. Please read more on this subject at http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/guestbook/policy.html.