SLIM SHOW Help Contents

Overview

Features

Getting Started

Commands

Object Types and Properties

Editing Techniques

Building a Show Project

The Speech Engine

FAQ and Project Making Tips

Order, Licensing, Distribution, Upgrade, and Others

Contact Information


Overview

SLIM SHOW lets you create and play professional looking, interactive multimedia presentations within Microsoft Windows.   It provides an easy to use, drag-and-place authoring environment for integrating multimedia materials consisting of text, sound, music, graphics, movies, synthesized speech (text-to-speech) and buttons for users interactions.

Once a project is finished, you can either run it directly within the SLIM SHOW program or to make it for distribution with a self-contained; standalone run-time player (the multimedia engine).   The player is very compact, requiring only 55 KB of disk space for regular projects, or 500 KB for projects that make use of the text-to-speech synthesizer.  You have the choice of making your projects in Auto mode or Non-compressing mode.  When a project is built in Auto mode, the player will expand and run on target computer automatically and then remove all components when the show is finished.  You can also choose to build your projects using non-compressing mode.  The non-compressing mode builder will generate the player and collect all the material files.  Projects built with non-compressing mode run directly without loading and decompressing.  This mode is ideal for making large projects to be stored in hard disks or CD-ROMs.  It also can be used to make projects to be integrated with other Windows programs.

SLIM SHOW does not come with tools to create the material files (BMP, JPEG, AVI, MIDI, WAVE and text).  Since the file types supported by SLIM SHOW are all common files used today, you should be able to find most of the editing tools easily.  Some of them even come with your system, for example "Paint" or "Paintbrush" for Bitmap files and Notepad for text files. The  "Sound Recorder" or the recorder utility supplied with your sound card can be used to make WAVE files.

The recommended system for using SLIM SHOW 2.1, or running projects produced by it:

* IBM PC or compatible computer with a 486/33 or higher processor.

* 8 MB or more RAM.

* SVGA graphic with 640 by 480 by 256 colors or better.

* Microsoft Windows 3.1x or Windows 95.

* Windows compatible sound card (note *1).

* Mouse.

* 10 MB of free hard disk space (note *2).

Note *1:  When running a project on a PC without a sound card, the project will not play sounds but still runs and shows text and graphics.

Note *2: Varies with projects.

SLIM SHOW generates self-contained, standalone executable files that are ready to be played on target PCs, without the needs of many supporting devices or DLL files that may be required by other presentation programs.  The tiny multimedia engine and minimal system requirements make it easy for general PC users to enjoy professional multimedia presentations without the need for expensive equipment.  This is even more important if you intend to distribute your projects to your friends or customers.

SLIM SHOW can be used for many applications such as presentations, advertising, corporate image projects, making demos or tutorials, electronic books, edutainment programs, greeting cards, newsletters, multimedia albums, games and so on.  Because of its small size, you can now pack professional looking works onto diskettes or attach it in your E-mails for distribution.


Features

Features:

* Interactive multimedia maker for Windows 3.1 or Windows 95.

* Eighteen built-in transition styles for graphics, together with the combinations of blanking out and resizing. Other visual effects can be produced by arranging scenes externally.  Supports BMP, JPEG, and SBM (compressed Bitmap) graphic formats.

* Plays AVI movie.

* Various styles for showing text strings or text files.

* Plays MIDI and WAVE audio.

* Built-in text-to-speech synthesizer.  Speaks any text. Pitch and speed adjustable.  Allows use of custom dictionaries.

* Text or graphical buttons for users interaction.

* Visual authoring environment allowing you to drag-and-place nodes. Properties of the last editing node in each object type are memorized automatically for easy editing of new nodes.

* Basic editing tools - Copy, Paste, Delete, Undo and Undelete.

* Creates standalone, ready to run projects with player built-in.  Data compression applies automatically.  Fully automatic load and play process at run time.  All temporarily created files are cleaned up after the show.  Tiny player footprint (the multimedia engine only takes 55 KB of disk space for non text-to-speech projects, or 500 KB for projects with text-to-speech).  Projects can be built as self-extracting executable files - ideal for distributions in E-mails or diskettes.

* Non-compressing mode allows the creation of the player and raw material files.  Projects made in this mode run directly without loading and decompressing.

* Show window can adjust automatically to target video size or set to a fixed resolution.

* Transporting of TrueType text fonts (TTF) within projects.

* Graphic transition speed and text marching speed can be adjusted dynamically by Control objects. (Rev. 2.1 new feature)

* Allows custom text showing on load up screen. (Rev. 2.1 new feature)


The "mouse button" means the left button on your mouse (for right-handed users) or the right button for left-handed users.  This is the only mouse button you will be using in SLIM SHOW.


To "click on an object" means to point your mouse cursor at an object and press and quickly release the mouse button, without moving your mouse in between.


To "drag an object" means to point your mouse cursor at an object and then press and hold down the mouse button and move your mouse together with the grabbed object.


Getting Started

Follow normal Windows procedures to start SLIM SHOW.  This will launch the SLIM SHOW main window with a menu bar at the top, a graphic bar on the left, a scroll bar on the right and the working area in the center.  The menu bar is for executing commands, the graphic bar contains object icons, which are the building blocks for the multimedia project, and the scroll bar is for scrolling the working area.  A recycle bin, for showing and recovering deleted data, is located at the bottom left corner of the main window.  The central working area contains the currently opened project diagram, consisting of nodes linked by arrows that show the sequence of execution.  Each node is represented by an icon that shows the object type, with the node ID number on the left and annotations on the right.  ID numbers are assigned to nodes automatically and provide references for branch locations.  Annotations show file names, text and other important properties of nodes.

Start creating your project by clicking or dragging icons from the graphic bar and placing them onto the working area.  New icons become nodes as they are placed and arrows appear automatically in between nodes to indicate the sequence of the show.  Nodes inside the working area can also be grabbed and moved.

To change the properties of a node, click on its icon to open the property editing dialog and then edit the details.  For a node of "MIDI Music", "WAVE Sound" or "Speech" type, the "Play" or "Speak" button in the dialog window lets you hear the sound.  For a node of "Background", "Graphics", "Movie", "Text", or "Button" type, the "View" button in the dialog window allows you to view a scene in a pop up window that looks the same as the show (target) window.  For Movie object you can also hear the audio part at the same time.

The size of the show window can be set to either full screen (automatically adjusted to the resolution of the current video mode setting) or a fixed size.  A detailed discussion on this subject can be found in the "Deciding the show window size" section.

Click on or near the ID number of a node to select (highlight) that node.  To select more than one node, point the mouse cursor to the ID number of the starting node and drag the mouse to the ID number of the last node in the series and release it.  To select a large number of nodes, use the "Mark" command from the "Edit" menu to open a dialog box and type in the starting and ending ID numbers manually.

Use "Copy", "Cut", "Paste", or "Delete" from the "Edit" menu to cut and paste or delete the selected nodes.  Use "Undo" to reverse your last change.

Deleted nodes go to the recycle bin.  You can undelete them by grabbing them back from the recycle bin.   All deleted nodes can be recovered from the recycle bin in reverse order of deletion.

Use  "List" to show a line-by-line listing of the project.  When you select the List command from the File menu, a temporary file that contains the project listing will be created, and the Windows Notepad will be called to view the file.  You can view, search, and print the listing file inside the Notepad.

The listing is a temporary file and will be removed when you invoke another list command, or when the SLIM SHOW program terminates.  If you want to keep the listing file, you should use the "Save As" from the Notepad program to save a copy to a different name.

Test run your work at any time by choosing "Run" or "Run From" from the "File" menu.  "Run" will let you start a complete run of your project from the beginning (node #1).  "Run From" lets you run your project from a specific node (i.e., the first one of the highlighted node or nodes) to save time.  Running will stop immediately after the execution reaches the "END" mark.  When the "END" mark is reached, the unfinished sound, music, speech, or movie will be stopped and aborted.  A show can also be interrupted and stopped at any time by hitting the <Esc> key.

When a test run (when a project is running directly from the SLIM SHOW program) is in progress, the title bar on top of the show window shows the current scene (node) ID number, providing a debugging tool for tracing your project.  Please note that you can see the title bar only if your screen size if larger than the size of the show window.

When test running a show, the main window of the SLIM SHOW program will be disabled.  You are still allowed to have other Windows applications running simultaneously.  It is not recommended that you take the input focus away from SLIM SHOW when a show is running as the content of the screen may be corrupted when you do this.  Because the visual effect of the presentation relies on dynamically showing graphics on the screen, the images will not be repainted when the show window is brought back from the background.

From the "File" menu, use "Open", "Save" and "Save As" to load or save projects.  Once a project is finished and tested, use "Make Disk" to produce project files.  You can use Autoplay mode to create the project file or files that are ready to play on other machines or use the Non-compressing mode to create a player program and collect all supporting files and project material files that are needed to run the project.


Commands

File Menu  Contains commands to open, save, list, run, make projects, and to exit.

Edit Menu  Contains the following commands to edit projects: mark, cut, paste, delete nodes, and to undo changes.

Options Menu Contains the "Project options" submenu to invoke a dialog for project options selection.

Utilities Menu Contains the "Compress BMP files" submenu to invoke a dialog for compressing BMP files.

Help Menu  Contains commands for getting Help, About and Order information.


File Menu

File Menu contains commands to open or save projects, list projects, run projects, make disks or to exit the program.

The project files created by the SLIM SHOW are binary files, with ".ss" file name extensions by default.  When a modified project is saved under an existing name, the original file is saved automatically to the same name with a ".ssb" extension as backup.  Only one project is allowed in the work area at a time.

New  To start a new project from scratch.

Open  To load an existing project to the work area for editing, running or making.

Save  To save the currently opened project.

Save As  To save the currently opened project to a specific name.

List  To show a line-by-line listing of the project.

Run  To run the opened project, starting from the first node (Node #1).

Run From  To run the opened project starting from a specific node.

Make Disk  To Make diskettes for distribution, or collect files and generate the player and supporting files for use in other Windows programs.  The "Make Disk" command invokes the "Make SHOW DISK" dialog window for specifying the Make options and proceeding with disk making.

Exit  To exit the program.


Edit Menu

Edit Menu Contains commands to mark, cut and paste nodes, to delete nodes, and to undo changes.

Cut  To cut the highlighted node or nodes from the work area and put them onto the Clipboard.

Copy  To copy the highlighted node or nodes onto the Clipboard.  The contents in the work area are not affected.

Paste  To retrieve the node or nodes from the Clipboard and paste them at the position before the highlighted node or nodes.

Delete  To delete the highlighted node or nodes and move them to the recycle bin.

Undo  To undo your last editing - the last action that alters the structure of the link or the properties of a node.

Mark  To highlight a node or nodes by manually giving the starting and ending node ID numbers.


Options Menu

Options Menu contains the "Project options" submenu for invoking a Project options dialog box to change the following project options.

Show window size

The "Show window size" group of controls is for selecting the size of the show (presentation) window.  The show window size can be set either to a fixed dimension or to the full screen.  The size is representing by pixels in X and Y dimensions.

Show window size can be changed at any time during the project editing phase.  When you prepare a project for distribution, this information will be built into it.  If you want to change the show window size after a project is built, you must run "Make Disk" again.

Although changing the show screen size is trivial, it is advisable that you decide on the size as early as possible in your project design phase since changing the show window size may affect your graphics layouts (Text and Graphics objects).  Please refer to the "Deciding the show window size" section for a more detailed discussion.

Movable show window

This is an option to allow the show window to be movable by dragging its title bar.  If this option is not selected, the show window will not respond to title bar dragging and remain fixed at the center of the screen.  Note that a title bar is available only when the show window size is smaller than the screen size that the user is showing on.  If the show window size is bigger than or equal to the current screen size, or if it is set to "Auto adjust to full screen" then the show window will not have a title bar and the show window will always be fixed at the screen center.

Normally its better to leave this option unchecked because when users move the show window partially off and back on the screen, the erased potion of the scene that was painted before will not get repainted automatically.

Hand-shaped cursor over buttons

This is an option that allows the cursor to change to a hand-shaped icon when it is placed over Button objects.  If this option is not checked, the cursor will not change shape when moved over buttons.

Preprocess JPEG/SBM files

Showing JPEG and SBM files requires decompression and usually takes longer than a same graphic saving as BMP file.  This option allows you to preprocess all the JPEG and SBM files at the beginning of the show to eliminate the processing delay at execution time.

Preprocessing is only needed in projects when timing is critical such as for creating animation effects.  In most projects the preprocessing is not necessary.  This option is not recommended for projects with a lot of JPEG/SBM files because it will cause a long delay at the initialization phase.

The project option parameters are stored in the project files, and they are loaded when a project file is opened.


Utilities Menu

Utilities Menu contains the "Compress BMP Files" command.

Compress BMP Files  To invoke the dialog window for compressing Windows Bitmap (.BMP) file into the .SBM files.  The compressed Bitmap files can be read and displayed by the SLIM SHOW engine directly.


Compress BMP Files

From the "Compress BMP Files" dialog window you can convert Windows Bitmap files (.BMP) into compressed Bitmap files (.SBM) that can be used as Graphics objects in the SLIM SHOW.  Using compressed Bitmap files is useful only when making projects in "Non-compressing" mode.  When making projects in "Autoplay" modes, the BMP files should not be compressed because the loader will handle the compression/decompression automatically.

File to compress:  This is a list box on the left-hand side of the dialog window that displays all the files to be compressed.

Select   Press the "Select" button to invoke a file selection dialog to select the Bitmap files for compression.  This dialog allows you to select more than one file at a time.  To select multiple files, hold down the <Ctrl> key while clicking the mouse button to preserve the previous selections.

Compress  Press the "Compress" button to start making compressed files.  The newly created files will have the same file name as the source files but with ".SBM" file extension, and reside in the same directory as the source files.  Be aware that when making the compression, the new created files will overwrite and replace the old compressed file of the same file name and extension (.SBM) in that directory without asking.

Cancel  The "Compress" button will be changed to "Cancel" once the compression process is started.  Pressing the "Cancel" button will cancel the remaining compression job after the current compression is finished.

Exit  Press this button to exit from the "Compress BMP Files" dialog and return to the SLIM SHOW main program window.


Help Menu

Help Menu contains commands for getting Help, About and Order information.

Contents  To bring up the on line help document.

Using Help  To display help on the Windows Help system.

About SLIM SHOW  To display copyright and contact information

Order Information  To display order information


Building a Show Project

SLIM SHOW provides an authoring environment for you to easily create your multimedia projects.  Your project can show text and graphics on the screen, play MIDI music and WAVE sounds together with synthesized speech via your audio device.  It also contains buttons which allow your audience to interact with your presentation.  Revision 2.0 or later also supports playback of AVI movies.

The recommended procedure for building a project is:

1. Deciding the show window size

2. Preparing materials

3. Creating the project file

4. Testing the project

5. Making the project for distribution


Deciding the show window size

The first thing you should do in designing a project is to decide the size of your show window.  Although this value is easy to change from the SLIM SHOW program, you should determine it as early as possible because:

(1) you need this information when creating your graphic files as well as selecting your text fonts, and

(2) it may have a significant impact on your project if you change this at a later stage as all of the graphical related scenes may be affected.

You have two choices for the show window size, the fixed size method and the auto-adjusted method.  The fixed size method always displays your project in a window of fixed X-Y dimensions specified by number of points.  If the target machine's screen is larger than this dimension, the show will be displayed in a small window with a title bar at the top.  If the target machine's screen is smaller, your show will be clipped and only the center part of it will be seen.  To guarantee that your show will not get clipped in different target machines, you will need to design your show to fit the lowest possible size, which is usually 640 by 480 by today's standard.

If you choose the auto-adjusted method, it will always adjust the show window size to match the full screen size of the target machine.  However, there are two concerns if you take this approach.  The first is that the graphic files are stored by fixed size and if you map them directly without resizing, they may leave blank spaces or get clipped when showing on different machines.  Using the "resize" option you can avoid this by letting the image stretch to fit to the specified location.  However, because of the resizing, your graphic may be a little distorted.  The second concern is that the size of the text is always determined by its font and is not scalable.  Although the text still gets shown at the designated place,  the relative size of the text to the target screen will vary.

Please note that the above discussion assumes that you are going to show your project on many different machines.  If your project is only to be shown on a dedicated machine with a known display size then this will not be an issue.


Preparing Materials

To create a project, you will have to prepare all your presentation materials.  Graphics can be  Windows Bitmap files (.BMP), JPEG files (.JPG) or compressed Bitmap files (.SBM).  Movies are AVI (Audio-Video Interleaved) Video for Windows (.AVI) files. Text objects use either literal string or text files.  You will also need to prepare text font files if you plan to use special fonts that are not installed in your system.  For sound, you need Windows WAVE or MIDI files.  For speech, use literal strings.  Buttons use either literal strings or Bitmap files (.BMP).

Once you have all these materials ready, you can start to build your project.


Creating the Project File

A show project is made by placing and linking nodes (multimedia objects) and assigning properties to those nodes in the work area.  A node is the basic building block of your show and is described by its object type and other properties.

There are a total of eleven object types supported by the SLIM SHOW 2.1 for showing scenes, playing audio and controls.  These object types are: Background, Graphics, Movie, Text, WAVE sound, MIDI music, Speech, Control, Timer, Go To, and Button.

The properties of nodes contain information such as filenames of the materials, transition styles, audio volume, branch positions, and so on.  Nodes are linked together by arrows, which indicates the execution flow of the project.

Each node in the project has a unique ID number.  These ID numbers are assigned sequentially from one to the maximum number of nodes allowed (32,000) as new nodes get added to the project.  Normally the execution starts from node #1 and follows the ID sequence unless there is a branch node.  Two object types effect a branch - the "Go To" and the "Button".   When a "Go To" node is encountered, the execution sequence of the show is unconditionally changed to the node that it points to.  Branches can also happen at button nodes as they get pressed by users.  Button nodes provide mechanisms for conditional branches since more than one button can appear at a time for the users to interact.

As nodes get moved, deleted or inserted, the ID numbers will be reassigned automatically.  For "Go to" or "Button" nodes, the destination properties that specify their branch locations will also be adjusted accordingly.


Object Types and Properties

There are a total of eleven object types in the SLIM SHOW 2.1 for building the project.

Background

Graphics

Movie

Text

WAVE Sound

MIDI Music

Speech

Control

Timer

Go To

Button


Background

Background objects specify the color to be used for painting the background.  You can specify the color by clicking on the "Color Select" button, which opens a color selection dialog window.  From the dialog window you can choose any one from the forty-eight colors in the "basic color" template, or define and pick your own color.

To define custom colors, press the "Define Custom Colors" button and bring up the color definition template.  Move the cursor inside the color refiner box and drag the arrow beside the luminosity bar to define your color.  You can also create a color by typing numbers in the Red, Green, and Blue boxes, or the Hue, Sat (saturation), and Lum (luminosity) boxes.  Click the up and down arrows to change  the numbers.  After the color is picked, you can add it to any one of the sixteen user-defined color boxes and assign that color to be used for your background.

When a Background node is executed, the whole background can be repainted immediately or left unpainted.  This property is specified by checking the "Repaint now" check box.  In either case, the new assigned background color will affect the followed Graphics and Text scenes.

The background color will have the following influences:

1. When a graphic node with the "Blank Screen" property checked is showing, it paints the screen with the background color.

2. When an opaque text (a text node with the "Transparent" property unchecked) is showing, the rectangular area around the characters will be filled with the background color.

3. When a button node is destroying, the location will be filled with the background color.  Its better to keep or set the background to the desired color (the color it supposed to be after the button is erased.) to prevent showing a "hole" on the scene when a button is erasing.

4. When an AVI node is staring or ending, the rectangle area where the AVI node is playing will be painted with the background color.  To eliminate the undesired blinking, the background color should be set to a color closed to the background color of the movie scene.


Graphics

Graphic objects show graphics on the screen.  The full name of the graphic file is specified in the  "File" property, and the maximum number of characters allowed is 80.   You can either type the name directly in the Edit box or click on the "File Select" button to open the file selection dialog window and make the selection.

SLIM SHOW 2.1 supports three graphic file formats for the Graphics objects - Windows Bitmap (.BMP), JPEG (.JPEG) and compressed Bitmap (.SBM).  The ".SBM" is a special file format used by the SLIM SHOW program only.  They can be generated by using the Compress BMP Files utility.

You can choose from one of the eighteen transition styles by using the "Style" combo box to show your graphic file.  Together with styles, there are three other properties to select.  The "Resize" property lets you choose to display the picture either in its original size or to have it stretched to the specified dimension.  If you have this Resize property checked, your graphic will be stretched (enlarged or shrunk) to fit the specified positions and the "Left Align" property is ignored.  If the "Resize" box is not checked, then the graphic is displayed in its original size, and the specified dimension is used as a reference to calculate the alignment. The "Left Align" property lets you choose to align the non-stretched picture either by the upper left corner or by its center point relative to the display region that you specify.

The third property; "Blank"; is for painting the area either with the picture or with the background color.  If the Blank property is checked, Instead of showing the picture, the background color will be painted in the specified area using one of the 18 transition styles.

The position property of the graphic is specified by the four numbers that describe its left, top, right and bottom positions.  The numbers used to specify the positions are in a scale of zero to ten, allowing two decimal places.  The number sets the position relative to the dimension of the show screen.  0.00 means the left or top most position on the show screen, 5.00 is in the middle and 10.00 represents the right or bottom corner position.

A position control window is used to specify the display area for the graphic.  The position control window has one big rectangle on the outside that represents your show window screen, and a smaller rectangle in black located inside, representing your graphic.  You can move the black rectangle by dragging it inside the larger rectangle.  You can also change its size by moving your cursor close to the rectangle boundary and dragging it, in the same way you change the size of a regular window.  The four boxes attached to the right of the control window give the exact values of the left, top, right, bottom positions of the graphic object.  When you change the position or size of the small rectangle by dragging it, the contents inside these four boxes will be updated automatically.  You may also enter numbers directly into these boxes to change the size and position.  When you do this, the inside rectangle of the custom control window will change accordingly.

Some built-in transition styles are generated by tiling, which breaks the source image into a matrix of rectangles, and then paints them back to the destination windows in certain orders.  The final images of the tiled pictures may be a little larger or smaller than the dimensions specified in the positions properties.  This is because the specified position values may not equal to the multiplication of the tile size with an integer.  Tiling is used in the following styles: Brush Left, Brush Right, Brush Up, Brush Down, Brush to the middle, Spiral, and Random.

The wait time property specifies the period to wait (snooze) before the execution of the next node.  A delay value between 0 and 32 seconds is allowed, with an accuracy to 0.1 second.  If you want to snooze more than 32 seconds, you need to use external Timer objects.

Showing of JPEG and SBM files takes longer than the BMP files because of the decompression.  You can choose to preprocess all the JPEG and SBM files at the beginning of the show.  For more information please refer to the section that describes the Project options.


Movie

A Movie object lets you view the video of the Microsoft Video for Windows (.AVI) movie file in a specified area on the screen and play the sound track through the WAVE device.  For Windows 3.1 users, you will need to install the Microsoft Video for Windows runtime module to your system to play the AVI files.  For Windows 95, the AVI player module is built in the system.

The full name of the AVI file should be specified in the "File" Edit box, and the maximum number of characters allowed is 80.  You can either type the name directly in the Edit box or click on the "File Select" button to open the file selection dialog window and make the selection.

The "Wait for complete" option lets you decide if your show should move on while the movie is playing.  If you have this option checked then the execution of the following nodes must wait until the movie playing is finished, otherwise execution will continue while the file is playing.

The "Loop" option lets you play the movie continuously until stopped by a control node.  If you use "Wait for complete" option at the same time with the "Loop" the show will loop endlessly within that scene.

Since playing the sound track of the AVI file usually requires the WAVE output device, in current version of the SLIM SHOW the movie playing can only be overlapped with nodes that do not need the WAVE output device.  When the execution reaches another node that needs the WAVE output device before the movie playing is finished, the execution will have to wait.  To prevent the execution from waiting, you can place a Control node before the second WAVE Sound to stop the previous one first.  The Movie, WAVE Sound and the Speech nodes all need a WAVE output device.

The position of a Movie object should be specified in the same way as the Graphics object.


Text

A text object shows text on the screen.  Either a literal string or a text file can be used, which is specified in the "Text or File" property.  For literal text, you enclose the string inside two quotation marks (") and type it into the Edit Box.  For a text file, you can either type in the whole name of the file into the Edit box, or use the "File Name" button to open a File selection dialog.  Note that if you do not use the two quotation marks to enclose the text, the text will be used as a filename.  The maximum number of characters you can put in the "Text or File" property is 80.

You can specify three option properties for the text object.  Normally, when none of the option boxes are checked, the text will show up immediately when the node is executed.  Each character will be shown with the rectangular area around it painted with the background color.  All text is aligned at the center of the specified display area, both horizontally and vertically.

The "Marching" option makes the text appear one character at a time instead of all at once.  The marching speed depends on the current transition speed setting, which can be changed in a  Control object. The "Transparent" option lets you paint the text only and leave the surrounding area untouched.  The "Left align" option forces the text display to start at the left top corner of the area that you specify.  Note that the alignment is meaningful only if all of the text can be fitted into one line of display.  If not, then the text will always be displayed from the upper left corner and will wrap to the next line automatically at a word boundary.  If space runs out before the whole text is displayed, the rest of it will not be seen.

Both literal string and text files support standard ANSI character set.  In text files, the carriage return (CR) are interpreted as the control characters.

For text files, the string will also be wrapped to the next row when horizontal space is limited, but unlike the literal string, the wrap will not always be made at word boundaries.  The maximum number of characters allowed in a text file is 4096.

A text object is not scalable.  Its size is determined by the text itself and the text fonts used.  The display area you specify is used as a reference for alignment, and if there is insufficient space, the text will be clipped.

The position of a text object is specified in the same way as the Graphics object.

The wait time property specifies the period to wait (snooze) before execution of the next node.

Text can be displayed using any text font installed on your system.  For presenting on target machines, the SLIM SHOW program bundles all the special TrueType text fonts that are needed to the project during the project making process automatically.  If a text font you specify is not available on the target machine and it's not a TrueType font, the player program will find a suitable replacement to use.

If you need to make projects with special text fonts, pay special attention to the license agreements of these fonts because you may not have rights to distribute them or to use them in other machines.  Always make sure you have sufficient rights for all of the materials you intend to distribute.   The SLIM SHOW program will show you a list of all the material files that it is collecting when making the project disk.


WAVE Sound

A WAVE Sound object plays a Windows WAVE file via the audio device.  The full name of the WAVE file needs to be specified in the "File" property, and the maximum number of characters you can use is 80.  Depending on the length of the WAVE sound, the playback may take a while to complete.  The "Wait for complete" option lets you decide if your show should move on while the WAVE sound is playing.  If you have this option checked then the execution of the following nodes must wait until the WAVE playing is finished, otherwise execution will continue while the file is playing.

The "Loop" option lets you play the WAVE sound continuously until stopped by a control node.  If you use "Wait for complete" option at the same time with the "Loop" the show will loop endlessly within that scene.

The WAVE playing can only be overlapped with nodes that do not need the Windows wave output device.  When the execution reaches another node that needs the WAVE output device before the previous one is finished, the execution will have to wait.  To prevent the execution from waiting, you can place a Control node before the second WAVE Sound to stop the previous one.  The WAVE Sound, Movie and the Speech nodes all need a WAVE output device.

The volume slider is used to set the volume of the wave output device.


MIDI Music

A MIDI Music object plays a MIDI file via the audio device.  The full name of the MIDI file needs to be specified in the "File" property, and the maximum number of characters you can use is 80.  Depending on the length of the MIDI music, the playback may take a while to complete.  The "Wait for complete" option lets you decide if your show should move on while the MIDI file is playing.  If you have this option checked then the execution of the following nodes must wait until the MIDI playing is finished, otherwise execution will continue while the file is playing.

The "Loop" option lets you play the MIDI file continuously until stopped by a control node.  If you use "Wait for complete" option at the same time with the "Loop" the show will loop endlessly within that scene.

Please be aware that the MIDI playing cannot be overlapped with another MIDI Music node.  When the execution reaches another MIDI node before the previous one is finished, the execution will have to wait.  To prevent the execution from waiting, you can place a Control node before the second MIDI node to stop the previous one.

The volume slider is used to set the volume of the MIDI output device.

Some device drivers may not support volume change for the 16-bit multimedia sound system when running under Windows 95.


Speech

Speech objects produce synthesized speech from text.  You specify the literal string that you would like to be spoken in the "Text" property - the maximum number of characters allowed is 80.  Please note that the two quotation marks are not needed in a Speech Object.  If you include quotation marks, they will literally be converted to the string "quote" and spoken out.

The "Wait for Complete" option and the Volume properties are the same as for the WAVE Sound object.  The "Tempo" slider adjusts the speed of the speech, and the "Pitch" slider adjusts the tone.

Speech requires wave device too so it can only be overlapped with nodes that do not need the Windows wave output device.

You can customize the pronunciation of words by editing the dictionary file used by the synthesizer.  For more information on the speech synthesizer, please refer to the "The Speech Engine" section.


Control

Use Control objects to adjust the volume of, or stop, MIDI and WAVE audio.  The Control object can also stop an AVI movie.

Starting from revision 2.1, the Control object also lets you set the speed of the built-in transition of the Graphics as well as the marching speed of the Text.  This feature allows you to change the speed dynamically within the projects.  Drag the "Adjust transition speed" slide bar in the property editing window to set the speed.  Move the slide bar to the right to make it faster, or to the left to set a lower speed.


Timer

A timer object provides a delay period within the show.  The delay time can range from 0.1 to 32 seconds.   It is used to add wait times in the presentation.   For example, you might need to play a MIDI tune for ten seconds before showing a picture, or turning down its volume, etc.  You may link more than one timer together to extend the delay time beyond 32 seconds.


Go To

A "Go To" object forces a branch in execution.  The node pointed to by its target property will become the next node for execution.


Button

A Button object provides a way for users (audience) to interact with your presentations.  It forces the node pointed to by its target ("Go to") property to be the next one for execution when pressed by the user.   For each button node, if its successor (the node underneath it, not the node pointed by its target property) is also a button then it will spawn a thread to this next node automatically in the execution.  Because of this, if more than one button is connected in sequence, they will all be shown on the screen together.  The execution will wait indefinitely at the last node of a series of button nodes for the user to take action.  Once the user presses one of these buttons, all the buttons disappear and execution continues from the node pointed to by the pressed button.

You can draw text or a Bitmap on a button by specifying the literal text or the filename of the Bitmap file in the "Text or File" property.  When specifying a literal string, you need to enclose it in quotation marks.  You can use up to 80 characters.

The size and position of the button are specified by the "Position" control, and should be assigned in the same way as for the Graphics object.

A button can be shown with or without its outline - this is defined by its "Draw Outline" property.  The "Resize" property of a graphic button allows the Bitmap to be stretched to fit on the button.  If you do not check this option, the Bitmap will be shown in its original dimensions.   It will be clipped if the button size is too small, and blank areas will be added if the button is too large.  Unlike the Graphics object, the size of a graphic button is always drawn to the size that you specify.

You can choose to have the mouse cursor changed to a hand shape when it is moved over  Button objects.


Editing Techniques

Adding a new node

Deleting a node or nodes

Undeleting a node or nodes

Moving a node or nodes

Selecting a node or nodes

Marking a node or nodes

Copying a node or nodes

Cutting a node or nodes

Pasting a node or nodes

Undoing the last move

Editing node properties

Using memorized properties


Adding a new node

Clicking on an object icon in the graphic bar will append a new node of that type to the end of your project.   If you want the new node to be placed between your existing nodes instead of at the end, you should drag it from the graphic bar and release it at the appropriate point.  Always use the tip of the arrow-shaped mouse cursor as the reference point for releasing objects.


Deleting a node or nodes

You can drag a node and release it to the recycle bin to delete it.  You may also delete one or more nodes by selecting (highlighting) them first, then pressing the <Del> key on your keyboard.  Using the "Delete" command from the "Edit" menu works the same as pressing the <Del> key.


Undeleting a node or nodes

You can drag nodes back from the recycle bin and put to any place you want in your working area.  The recycle bin works like a stack, saving all your deleted items.  You recover deleted items from the recycle bin in the reverse order in which they were deleted.  The recycle bin also remembers how many nodes you deleted each time, and keeps them the same when you recover them.  For example, if you delete three nodes at once, when you undelete you will be grabbing three nodes back, connected in their original sequence.  The recycle bin is cleared when you save or open projects.

You can put back a recovered item to a different place from which it was deleted.  This provides you another method of moving nodes around, and is especially useful when you want to move more than one node at a time, or if you are moving some distance from its original place.

You can also use the "Undo" from the "Edit" menu to recover your deleted nodes.  This way, the deleted nodes will always be put back to their original locations.  However, you can only undo the last modification.


Moving a node or nodes

You can move a node from one place to another simply by grabbing the node and dropping it at the desired location.  It you need to move more than one node at a time, or move something to a place outside the current screen, you can delete them to the recycle bin and then restore them back to the desired place.  Use of the Clipboard also achieves this.


Selecting a node or nodes

A node or nodes must be selected before they can be deleted, cut or copied.  Also, selection provides a reference for the "paste" and the "Run From" commands.  In the SLIM SHOW  program, at least one node will be selected at any time (highlight will be on the "END" marker if the project contains no nodes).  When a node is not selected, its ID number is shown in black on a white background.  A selected node or nodes have their node ID number shown in reverse color.  We will also refer to the selected notes as "highlighted".

Clicking near the ID number area of a node will select it.  To select more than one, point the mouse near the first node's ID number and drag it to the area near the last node's ID.   If you need to highlight more nodes than can be shown on one screen, use the "Mark" command in the "Edit" menu.


Marking a node or nodes

Use the "Mark" command from the "Edit" menu to select one or a sequence of nodes by giving the ID numbers of the first and the last nodes.  A simple dialog box will appear for you to type in the numbers.


Copying a node or nodes

Use the "Copy" command from the "Edit" menu to copy the selected nodes to the Windows Clipboard.  The Clipboard is a global storage area managed by the Windows system for applications to exchange data.  Data copied to the Clipboard from SLIM SHOW can be used later for pasting.  This provides a way for moving or duplicating nodes.  You can also use the Clipboard to import and export nodes between different project files.

The maximum number of nodes that can be copied to the Clipboard at one time is 500.

The Copy command can also be given by pressing <Ctrl><c>.


Cutting a node or nodes

"Cut" is the same as "Copy" except that the selected node or nodes will be removed from the work area.  A "Cut" command can also be given by pressing <Ctrl><x>.


Pasting a node or nodes

"Paste" from the "Edit" menu is used to paste data from the Clipboard.  Nodes on the Clipboard will be inserted before the current highlight positions.  If you want the data to be pasted at the end of the project, put the highlight on the "END" sign.

Data on the Clipboard will not be destroyed by the paste operation.  The "Paste" command can also be given by pressing <Ctrl><v>.


Undoing the last move

"Undo" from the "Edit" menu provides a way for users to back out from their last modification to the project data.  This includes changes in a node's properties or the way nodes are linked.   A modification can be caused by "Add", "Delete", "Move", "Cut", "Paste" or by invoking of the dialog that changes the properties of a node.

The "Copy" command, or the changing of highlight positions or screen size will not modify the project data.

One limitation of the "undo" command is that you cannot undo an "Undelete".  Another point to note is that pressing "OK" is still considered to be a modification, even if no changes were actually made in the Property editing dialog.  However, if you press the "Cancel" button to back out the dialog, then this does not count as a modification.

The "Undo" command can also be given by pressing <Ctrl><z>.


Editing node properties

Click on the node icon to change the properties of that node.  A Property Editing dialog box will pop up for you to make changes.  The title of the dialog box tells you the node's ID number and type.

For MIDI, WAVE or Speech nodes, a "Play" or "Speak" button can be pressed to listen to the sound.  The "Play" or "Speak" button will change to a "Stop" button after the sound starts so that you can stop the playing anytime.   For Text, Graphic, Movie or Button type nodes, a "View" button can be pressed for previewing.   When pressed, a preview window that is the same as the target window will pop up showing the scene.  Depending on your current display size and the show window size of your choice, the preview  window may be a smaller window appearing in the center on your current screen, or it can occupy your whole screen.  If your current display is smaller than the show window size then you will only see the center of the show.  Unlike sound playback, the "View" button will not change to a "stop" (for returning to the property editing dialog).  This is because the button may not be accessible if the view window covers your whole screen.  To clear the view, you can either press the <Esc> key on your keyboard or click on any place in the view window (except on top of a button).  If the view window is smaller than the whole screen, you can also go back by clicking on other places in the editing dialog window.  Do not click on the "View" button because this will show you the view again.

Once the editing is done, press the "OK" button to accept the changes.  If you decide not to make changes, press the "Cancel" button.


Using memorized properties

For each object type, the properties of the last edited node are saved automatically as default values for further new nodes of that type.  This is very useful when you are creating a series of nodes that have similar properties.

The node's properties only get memorized when you hit the "OK" button in the last editing.


Testing the project

Test run your work at anytime by choosing "Run" or "Run From" from the "File" menu.  "Run" will let you start a complete run of your project from the beginning (node #1).  "Run From" lets you run from a specific node (the highlighted node or the first one in a series of highlighted nodes) to save time.

Running will stop immediately after the execution reaches the "END" mark.  When the "END" mark is reached, all unfinished sounds will be stopped and aborted.  A show can also be interrupted at any time by hitting the <Esc> key.

When a test run is in progress, the title bar of the show window displays the current node ID number.  This provides a debugging tool for tracing your project.  Be aware that the title bar will appear only when the show window size is smaller than the size of the screen you are currently working on.  For example, if your project size is 640 by 480 and you are working on a PC with 800 by 600 screen then you can see the title bar.

When running a show, the main window of the SLIM SHOW program will be disabled.  You are still allowed to have other Windows applications running simultaneously.  It is not recommended that you take the input focus away from the SLIM SHOW when a show is running as the content of the screen may be corrupted when you do this.  Because the visual effect of the presentation relies on dynamically showing graphics on the screen, graphics and text images will not be repainted when the show window is brought back from the background.


Making the project for distribution

Once your work is finished and tested, you can use the "Make Disk" to pack the project file, material files and SLIM SHOW player and make the whole thing into a standalone, ready to run package for distribution.  This allows your audience to run your work without the SLIM SHOW program.

You have three choices when building your projects.  In "Autoplay" modes, your project will be built into a package that contains a loader that will expand, play, and clean up automatically on the target PCs.  Project materials are compressed when making the package, and decompressed before showing.  There are two variations in the "Autoplay mode" - "Single executable file" and "Multiple diskettes".  In "Single executable file" mode your project is made into one Windows executable file ("show.exe"), while in the "Multiple diskettes" mode the project are cut into small data files to fit in the diskettes/media.  When playing a project that is made into multiple diskettes, the user needs to run the "show.exe" file on the first diskette, and then the loader program will prompt the user for changing diskettes.

The third way to build your work is to use the non-compressing mode.  Projects built by this mode are also ready to run, but the project materials are not compressed.  At run time, there is no loader program to expand the project, or to clean up the files after the show.  When a project is made using the non-compressing mode, the builder generates a player executable file "ssplayer.exe" with supporting libraries, and collects your project file and material files and saves everything to the destination that you specify.  Usually the destination should be a subdirectory on your hard drive, unless you are sure that they can be fitted onto one floppy diskette (diskette changing is not allowed in this mode) and you do not mind if it is slow.

The non-compressing mode is very useful for making projects that do not need to be carried around.  It is usually for making projects to be stored in the hard disks or CD-ROMs and run from there directly.

Building in non-compressing mode can also be used by program developers that wish to integrate the SLIM SHOW player into their applications.  The SLIM SHOW  player program ("ssplayer.exe") is a Windows executable file and there are many ways for you to run it from your application, for example by using the "WinExec()" or "LoadModule()" API functions.  To have the player run properly, you will need to place all the related files, which include the project file ("show.ss"), the speech-support files (the voice font file and dictionary file), and all the project materials (WAV, AVI, JPG, BMP, SBM, MID, TXT) into the same directory as the player file.  You can place the support libraries (the DLL files) in that directory too or you can place them in the Windows system directory.  If there are special text font (.TTF) files, you need to either install them or to add the resources before executing the player.

Regardless of which mode you are using, during the Make Disk process the program will show you a list of all the material files that are used by the project.  One very important thing to do is to check this list and make sure that you have appropriate rights for distributing these materials.


Make SHOW DISK dialog window

Project Title  To specify the Project Title.  A string up to thirty-two characters can be used.  The Project Title will appear in the title bar of the show window (only if space allows) during show time.  If the project is made with "Autoplay" modes, the Project Title will also appear on the load up screen.

If the Project Title area is left blank and the "Movable show window" option is not set (show window is not movable) then the show window will not have a title bar even if space allows.

Destination Drive:Directory  To specify the full path (drive:path) of the making destination.

Make Option  To specify how to build the project.  You can choose from the following three options. (1) Autoplay - multiple diskettes. (2) Autoplay - single executable file.  (3) Non-compressing mode.

Diskette Size  To specify the diskette size to be used in the "Autoplay - multiple diskettes" mode.  The data files will be built and cut to sizes smaller than this number to fit to the diskettes.


The Speech Engine

The Speech Engine used in SLIM SHOW is a real text-to-speech synthesizer that can generate speech from any randomly provided text.  It is not a digitized voice playback system nor a pre-recorded word concatenation system.  The speech engine generates speech by translating text into phonemes using its internal rules.  Sometimes these rules do not pronounce words properly, so an exception dictionary which maps words into their desired pronunciations, is used to override the rules. You can use the Dictionary Editor program included in the SLIM SHOW package for editing your dictionaries.  For usage of the Dictionary Editor, please refer to its own Help menu.

The speech engine and voice font takes about 500K bytes of disk space.  This equals about 45 seconds of voice recording using 11.025 KHz/mono sampling rates.  A general guideline is that if you are recording voice for more than 45 seconds in your project, the speech synthesizer will save you disk space over digitized voice.  When building your project  files, the SLIM SHOW program will check to see if the project contains any speech object.  If no speech object exists then it will not build the speech engine files into the project.

The speech quality of the synthesized speech is not as good as digitized human voice.  However, there are advantages to using the speech synthesizer other than just saving disk space.  For instance, you do not need to record the voice, making changes is easier and it allows you to change the tempo and pitch.

The Speech Engine shipped with the SLIM SHOW program is to be used within the SLIM SHOW player only!  You are not allowed to use it for other purposes.


FAQ and Project Making Tips

.Which graphic file format should I use?

Use JPEG for photo-like graphics, and use BMP for cartoon-like graphics (graphics with simple color - same color in large areas).  Use SBM only when you need to save spaces in making non-compressing mode projects.

.Space saving tips

Choose between JPEG and BMP format according to the nature of the graphics.  For BMP files, use 8-bit (256 colors) instead of 24-bit if not that many colors are needed.  The simpler the colors of a BMP the smaller in file size after compression, so you should keep adjacent points in a BMP to the same color unless they need to be different.  Do not use a graphic with a larger X-Y dimension than it will be displayed and let the program resize it for you - prepare the materials carefully ahead of time.  Use MIDI instead of WAVE for music because WAVE files take much more space than MIDI.  Playing with the sampling rate, resolution (8-bit or 16 bit), and stereo/mono mode of a WAVE file may save you lots of spaces without losing much in sound quality.  You can also play with the JPEG compression ratio to trade off between space and picture quality.  Usually the space you can squeeze from graphics is much less than what you can get from WAVEs because eyes are more difficult to be cheated than the ears.

.Color palette considerations

When two or more graphics are to be displayed at the same time on 256 or fewer color graphic PCs, they should all use true color (24-bit color), or use indexed (palette) color with same palettes.  If they use different palettes, the color of the previous graphic will be corrupted when the new one gets displayed.

When a true color (24-bit color) graphic is displaying on a 256 or less color system by SLIM SHOW, the color will first be converted to a "general" color palette.  This general color palette contains colors that cover the full color spectrum, and it reasonably shows graphics of different color aspects.  Picture quality degrades because of the downsizing in color depth and also because the color palette is not optimized for this specific graphic.

To get a better image quality than using the general color palette, you can choose to make your graphics using color palettes optimized for them. You need to make sure all the graphics to have the same color palette if they are going to be shown together.  To make two or more graphics the same palette, you can:

1. Convert all the graphics to True color (24-bit color) first.

2. Create a blank, large, 24-bit color graphic and then copy and paste all the graphics into it.

3. Reduce the color depth of this new graphic to 8-bit color (256 colors) using optimized color.

4. Save the color palette and apply it to all the original graphics.  You can also choose to copy and paste from the new graphic to generate the originals.

.Text on Buttons

System font is used for text on the Button objects, and you need to make sure the size of a button is large enough for holding the text to view on systems with a large font setup.  Always test your text buttons by setting your display with the large font to verify if the space if enough.

.Background color setting

Background color objects are not only for painting and graphic erasing.  They affect the background of text (if transparent is not selected) and the Button objects (when erasing).  It is important to set the background color to the same color where Buttons are to be placed to prevent "holes" on the picture when Buttons are destroying.

.Stop previous MIDI before playing a new one

If a MIDI node gets executed before a previous MIDI is finished, then the whole show waits at the new MIDI node.  This can be prevented by inserting a Control node to stop MIDI right before the second MIDI node.

One common mistake is to forget to add a stop MIDI node before the very first MIDI in a show, and then a branch exists somewhere in the show to loop back to this first MIDI.  For example, consider the following project.

00001 MIDI song1.mid

  :        :

  :        :

00100 CONTROL STOP MIDI

00101 MIDI song2.mid

  :        :

  :        :

00200 Button "xx" (BRANCH TO zz)

00201 Button "yy" (BRANCH TO 1)

When the user click on Button "yy" at 201, the program wait there instead of rerun - because "song2.mid" is still playing!

.Why hitting <Esc> did not stop the show?

You need to make sure the input focus is at the show window for it to take the keyboard input.  Normally the input focus is on the show window unless the user switch it to another task after the show is started.  Usually you can tell if the input focus is on the show window by looking at the color of its title bar if it has one.

Also be aware that some applications may intercept others' keycodes!

.Tiling problem

When showing some graphics using one of the following transition style: Brush Left, Brush Right, Brush Up, Brush Down, Brush to the middle, Spiral, and Random; the right and bottom portions of the graphic are cut off.  You probably notice this by feeling that the right or bottom edges are missing, or seeing the display size is a little different from showing the same graphic in normal or other transition styles.  Sometimes you used a graphic to blank out a screen but you found that some right and bottom portions are not erased as you have specified!

This problem is caused by "tiling".  "Tiling" is a process to cut your graphic into small squares and then paint them back to the screen in certain order to generate the desired transition effect.  The program will first try to find a suitable tile size with a number that can be divisible by both the X and Y dimension of the graphic plus keeping the total number of tiles in a certain range.  Sometimes it is not possible to find a tile size that can be divisible by the X-Y dimension of the graphic, so part of the right and bottom portions (the remainders of the divisions) are discarded.

To prevent this, you should choose the X-Y dimension of your graphic so that they can be divided easily, for example using number such as 120 or 128 instead of 127.


Order, Licensing, Distribution, and Others

Order, Licensing, Distribution, Upgrade, and Others

There are two different licensing plans for the SLIM SHOW 2.1 program:

Standard version.  $49.95 (Tax/shipping included).  The standard version license allows you to use one copy of the SLIM SHOW program on one computer at a time, to make presentations directly or to make projects for non-commercial distribution (Note *).  For each project you make, you may not distribute more than 20 copies - otherwise it will be considered enterprise use.

Enterprise version.  $99.95 (Tax/shipping included).  The enterprise version license allows you to use one copy of the SLIM SHOW program on one computer at a time, to make presentations directly or to make projects for non-commercial distribution (Note *).  You may build your projects and distribute an unlimited number of copies provided you do not sell them for profit.  For example, you could build a training project and distribute to employees, or make a product promotion project and send it to prospects.

Note *:  If you intend to distribute a product made with SLIM SHOW (a project with the SLIM SHOW runtime engine built inside) for profit, or to sell the projects you made to another party/company for distributions, you need to obtain a commercial distribution license for it.  For each product, the cost for a royalty-free commercial distribution license is only $49.95.  Please contact PC WholeWare for a sample copy of the distribution license agreement before ordering.

To order SLIM SHOW 2.1, please fill out or prepare the information on the order form and use one of these methods:

(1) Send a check (drawn on a U.S. bank) or postal money order paid to "PC WholeWare", and mail it with your order form to:

    PC WholeWare

    33 Justin Street,

    Lexington, MA 02173

    USA

Sending cash (US fund only) to the above address is acceptable but not recommended.  PC WholeWare can not be responsible for cash lost in the mails.

(2) Order by phone, fax, mail, or directly from the Internet by using a credit card (VISA/MC/AMEX/Discover).  This is an ordering service provided by PsL (Public Software Library, a company that provides credit card order service).  The reference number for the SLIM SHOW program in PsL is #14987.

By Phone: 800-242-4775 or 713-524-6394

By Fax:   713-524-6398

By Mail:  PsL, P.O.Box 35705, Houston, TX 77235-5705, USA

From Internet: go to "http://www.pcww.com/" and follow the instructions.

(3) From CompuServe.  Type "GO SWREG" from CompuServe and follow the instructions.  The Registration IDs for them are:

SLIM SHOW (Standard version)  -  #13823

SLIM SHOW (Enterprise version) - #13829

Orders will be processed and shipped by first class/air mail as soon as they are received.  For urgent needs, a temporary file can be sent to you by E-mail attachment to use right away. (you need to include an E-mail address and put an URGENT note on your order form.)

If you wish to order using another method not listed above, such as direct fund transferring to bank account, please send e-mail to: "orderinfo@pcww.com" to make an arrangement.

Upgrade

Slim Show program has been and will be improved constantly.  The version number used by Slim Show program has this format:

A.BC

A: the Major version number, which gets changed when major functional changes are made to the program.

B: the Minor version number, represents an upgrade with minor functional improvements.

C: the Maintenance version number. It gets changed when maintenance releases are introduced.  Maintenance versions are usually released for fixing program or document problems only.  This number is omitted when a Major or Minor version is first introduced.  The Maintenance version number does not appear in the program document.

For example, in "Slim Show version 1.52", "1" is the Major version, "5" is the Minor version, and "2" is the Maintenance version.  In the program document the Maintenance number will not be used and the program will be referred as "Slim Show 1.5.

When a new version of the program is released, the product information will appear on our web site at "http://www.pcww.com/".  Registered users with e-mail information on our customer data base will also receive a notification.  Our current policy is to offer Minor and Maintenance upgrades free of charge.  Registered users can request the upgrade file to be sent by E-mail attachment.

For Major version releases, the upgrades need to be ordered.  For Slim Show 1.xx users, the upgrade price is $29.95.  Your Standard/Enterprise version status remains the same after the upgrade.

Product Serial Number

The Product Serial Number is used as a reference for your record.  You will need this number for obtaining supports and upgrades in the future.  For customers that ordered programs from  PC WholeWare directly (including orders processed by PsL and CompuServe), the five-digit invoice number on your receipt is your Product Serial Number. Your information is already in our data base and you do not need to do anything else.  If you ordered your copy from our authorized dealer and did not get a receipt from us, you need to send in the following information either by E-mail (register@pcww.com) or postal mail to have your record registered.

* Your name, postal address, and E-mail address.

* Date of purchase.

* Version (Standard or Enterprise).

* Dealer ID number or name.


                                          SLIM SHOW 2.1 ORDER FORM

(Please have the following information ready, or use it as the order form for fax/mail order)

Name __________________________________________________________________

Address _______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

Phone Number ____________________________ E-mail ______________________

SLIM SHOW (Standard Version)   Quantity __  X  $49.95  =  _____________

SLIM SHOW (Enterprise Version) Quantity __  X  $99.95  =  _____________

SLIM SHOW Upgrade (for 1.xx users only) __     $29.95  =  _____________

                                                    Total:_____________

Credit Card Information:

Type of card: VISA _______  MC _______  Amex _______  Discover ________

Card Number ___________________________  Expiration date ______________

Signature _____________________________________________________________


Contact information

Postal Address:

PC WholeWare

33 Justin Street

Lexington, MA 02173

U.S.A.

Telephone:

781-863-2546

Web site:

http://www.pcww.com/

E-mail:

info@pcww.com

103671.2141@compuserve.com