
Disclaimer:
===========

This program is supplied 'as is' with no guarantee of its suitability for any
purpose. I will not be held responsible for any loss of data occuring through
the use or misuse of this program. I will also not be held responsible for
anything else you may do after accidentally deleting your valuable files.
If you're worried about losing things, then use 'Retain Copies' - that's what
it's for.
If anything goes wrong with Black Hole please let me know. Preferably gently.
Then peel me off the ceiling and sit me down in fron of my computer with an
intravenous drip of caffeine whilst quitely phoning for an ambulance.

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Public Domain Notice:
=====================

Black Hole is released by courtesy of the Fat German in association with the
Great Green Gollywog and his minions. It may be freely copied and used, as
long as the following conditions are met:

a) That this notice is distributed unchanged with every copy.
b) That the application is supplied with unchanged versions of all the files
   described above.
   (If you do make modifications to any part of BlackHole, please do not
   distribute them without contacting me first, at the address below.)
c) No charge is made for the distribution. Public domain libraries may make
   a small charge to cover distribution costs
d) That you all smile and have a good time.
e) The applications !BlackOut, !BlkOutCfg, and !BHHelp  may not be
   distributed separately from Black Hole. Black Hole may NOT be distributed
   without these applications.
f) The application !Ukelele may be distributed separately from Black Hole,
   but Black Hole may NOT be distributed without !Ukelele.

All copyright is reserved. You may not use any part of this application in
any project which is to be sold for profit without my express permission
in writing.

If you wish to use pieces of my code in your own pd programs then please feel
free to do so, provided these programs are not intented for sale. I say this
mainly because my telling you not to do so would not stop you, but also
becasue I learned programming by nicking and splicing bits of other people's
programs, so why shouldn't you?

Historical Note: The above paragraph was written before I started compacting
the program. Anyone wanting to copy my code now is going to find it rather
difficult. But I left that paragraph in to show what a nice, generous chap
I am.

                             **Competition**
                             
The prize of a year's free subscription to "Sad Boring Gits Monthly" will be
presented to the first person who manages to de-compact the BASIC program
so that it is indistinguishable from the original (including all the REM
statements that have been removed). Entries on a postcard to be delivered by
carrier pigeon. Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed banana.

                             ***************

The code in the applications !BlackOut and !BlkOutCfg is not compressed and
you are therefore very welcome to copy it if that will make you happy.

If you do use my code, a credit would be nice. Money would be even better.

Anyone out there feeling particularly generous can send me a 5.00 (ono)
registration fee and a disc, (well, actually a disc and a nice letter saying
how wonderful my program is would probably do the trick,) and I will send
them free upgrades whenever I write one, possibly accompanied by any PD
applications I can get my grubby little mitts on. Come to that, a picture of
you smiling contentedly watching the icon spin round would make me very well
disposed towards you. And believe me, you want that. The Black Hole is not
merely a program - it's a living, breathing entity that will become very
nasty if you annoy it and has a very nasty sting. No, hang on, that's a wasp.
The Black Hole is a piece of code which runs in a 96K wimpslot and never
crashes unless I specifically programmed it that way. But that doesn't sound
as impressive.
Wibble.

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Thanks go to:
=============

All the programmers who unknowingly taught me how to program RISC OS; I've
only just bought my PRMs, so looking at other people's code was the quickest
way to learn.

Robin Watts     - The finer details of one or two SYS calls and the 
                  associated routines for extracting the useful data from
                  them were purloined from his excellent !Larger - 'Sticky
                  Backdrop Extraordinaire', which I spend most of my time
                  beta- testing for him. (I've got RISC OS 3, which has a
                  built-in sticky backdrop, but it's crap, so !Larger is a
                  most welcome burden on my hard disc.) Robin was also never
                  too busy to give advice or to let me peruse his PRMs.
                  (Well, hardly ever.....). The routines for doing the
                  Config. window as a composite window also came from Robin.
                  Robin's Addresses are:
                  217 Waterhouse Moor, Harlow, Essex CM18 6BW, OR
                  St. Catherine's College, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UJ
                  or by Janet: robin.watts@prg.ox.ac.uk

James Miller    - Thanks to James for mailing me with a bug in the
                  File Finder and informing me of the existence of the Boot
                  File Creation message. (Why do I always find the bugs the
                  day AFTER I release the software? This must be nature's way
                  of ensuring that software always produces offspring - a new
                  version is always required to fix the bugs in the previous
                  version. Evolution in action!)

Emmet Spier     - Emmet's Help file said that he didn't mind people nicking
                  his code, provided he got a credit, so I wholeheartedly and
                  ruthlessly butchered out the code for a filetype menu from
                  his !Set-Type. Then I decided that it took up too much
                  memory so I vastly simplified it to remove the sprites.
                  Then I found a new way of doing it so I put the sprites
                  back in. I can't remember whether any of Emmet's code is
                  still in there, but if it is thanks are due to him.

Jason Williams  - For designing the Shredder sprites. Very nice they are too.

Mark Kempster   - For the Burn sprites. They're cool. Er, hot.

Steve Singer    - I didn't copy any code from Steve, but it was he who
                  complained that he wouldn't even look at my proggy if the
                  iconbar icon didn't spin round. And he also wrote Bloxed.
                  He also showed me the NeXT workstation which was running
                  the program which gave me the inspiration for Black Hole.
                  And now he tells me he never uses Wastebin programs.....
                  
Dominic Symes   - For writing !Zap, the best editor around. Even if it does
                  crash quite a lot...
                  
Everyone who mailed / wrote to me with bugs:
                  Yes, all of you. I really appreciate this. The more bugs I
                  fix the better my software becomes and the closer I get to
                  being able to take over the world. Hahahahahahahahah!
                  Power!
                  
                  Sorry, got carried away there. Thanks anyway, guys. I'll go
                  and have a lie down.
                  
                  Special mention goes to all those people named in the
                  scrolltext in the Information window.

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Music played while programming:
===============================

Too many to name all, but these and more:
Brian Eno, Magma, King Crimson, Amon Dl II, Jethro Tull, Genesis,
Roxy Music, The Soft Machine, The Incredible String Band, Ozric Tentacles,
Can, Caravan, Led Zeppelin, Van Der Graaf Generator, Deep Purple, Stereolab,
Frank Zappa, Jah Wobble, Rage Against the Machine, Pooka, The Beatles....
This probably explains quite a lot. (Some of this stuff is simply not music
to work to. I feel I've comitted sacriledge and this program is it...)


                            The Fat German, 1994
                  (He's not fat and he's not German either)
              ==================================================

I can be contacted via the remarkable British postal service at:
   Mark Greenwood,
   122 Miswell Lane,
   Tring,
   Herts. HP23 4EU
   England
   
Or via the slightly quicker but infinitiely less reliable wonders of
telecommunications science at:
   mgreenwo@madge1.demon.co.uk
   
   
                     Thanks to Dave for inventing Fat German.