This text file gives a little bit of technical information about VirtuDesk, and
also the (currently rather short) history of its production.


History
-------

Version     Date                     Situation

0.00        23rd September 1997      Started work on the program.
1.00        26th September 1997      First version (1.00) completed.
1.01        6th March 1998           Added the option to give the window an icon
                                     bar. Changed the info box so that it
                                     doesnt look messy when the system font is
                                     being used. (With thanks to Adrian King for
                                     suggesting these changes to me).
1.01a       15th January 2001        Made the program compatible with versions
                                     of RISC OS less than 3.5, by removing
                                     referrences to Wimp_ResizeIcon. (Thanks to
                                     Mike Brown for suggesting this to me).
1.02        20th February 2001       Fixed a bug introduced in 1.01a: so the
                                     Windows menu option now works correctly.
                                     (Thanks to Ron Pond for noticing this).
1.03        18th March 2001          Added keyboard shortcuts and the option to 
                                     have no iconbar icon. Many thanks to Mike
                                     Brown for this suggestion (and also for his
                                     generosity!)
1.04        20th June 2001           Added the option of changing the colours,
                                     and having the top window coloured
                                     distinctly.
1.05        24th February 2002       Added the option to allow scrolling when
                                     the mouse reaches the edge of the screen.
                                     This has been due for some time!
1.06        23th March 2002          Updated so that it will hopefully work on
                                     RISC OS 3.50 again.

There, thats a pretty overwhelming set of events!


Technical stuff
---------------
For those of you who want to take things a stage further, here are a few pieces
of information which may be useful. Unfortunately I cannot give a full account
of how the program works, but you may find the following useful if you intend to
customise the program for your own specific needs.

The configuration settings which the program loads on startup are saved into the
application directory. If you are using the program on a read only device, (or
of course if you have some other reason for wanting to!) you can change the file
which it loads them from. The file is pointed to by the <VirtuDesk$ConfigFile>
system variable. Point this in the direction of your choice in the !Run file if
you want to load them from somewhere else.

You may also change the <VirtuDesk$ConfigProg> system variable if you wish
VirtuDesk to load some other application when the Configure... menu option is
selected. Why you would want to I have no idea, but whatever it points to is
Filer_Run-ned. For some reason this seems to open application directories
instead of run them, so point it to the !Run file of the application if you want
to run something which is in this form.

I can supply source code and information to anyone who is interested, some of
which is commented!

If you wish to use the text viewer application which displays the VirtuDesk help
file, then I can supply a useful program which will convert an impression
document into the required form. The viewers main plus point is that at less
than 1k, it makes a very small anti-aliased font text viewer. I also have a
non-font version at just 650 bytes (but then size isnt supposed to be important
- is it?!). I apologize to the purists who like their text as text and not stuck
in a viewer. I just think it looks nice, thats all.


