Init User v1.3

1999,1998 Schlomo Schapiro

Files:

INITUSER.EXE            Main Program
*.dpr,*.pas,*.dfm...    Delphi source files


Abstract:

Inituser displays information to users in a Novell NDS network and keeps track
of the version of the information. Upon change of the information files it
displays the information again. It also can run an external command once for
each user.

Supported File types:
1. BitMap images (Windows BMP)
2. Plain text files

The file type is recognized automatically and independantly from the extension.
(If you want to use an external program to print graphics, you have to use the
bitmap default extension, see later under Printing).

Working:

INITUSER reads all it's options from the command line. It then reads existing
configuration from the NDS. Then INITUSER runs the run once command (if this
user didn't yet run it) and displays all files that changed since the user
saw them the last time (or that the user never saw).

InitUser uses a multi-value attribute in the NDS to store its data. All data
appended by InitUser begins with "InitUser." so that existing data won't be
compromised.

The RunOnce option adds a string to the NDS
("InitUser.RunOnce=date & time (command)") where date and time are the date and
time of the moment when the command is run, command is the command run.

For each file there is a line in the attribute. The line starts with
"InitUser.File." to which the filename (with full path) as given on the command
line is add together with a size & timestamp.
Example: InitUser.File.C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT=250 342142344
Meaning that the file c:\autoexec.bat was seen. It was then 250 byte big and it's
DOS file date was 342142344 (in Delphis internal notation form).

When run, InitUser creates for each file the timestamp and compares it to the
one found in the NDS attribute. If they are different (or there was none in the
attribute) then the file is "earmarked" for displaying. If they are the same,
the file is discarded since the user already saw it.

After thus processing all files, if there are files left to be displayed,
InitUser switches to visual mode and opens a window that shows the file. The
window stays on top to force the user to read the content of the file. On the
window is a checked Checkbox "Show this next time I login" which the user has
to clear if he doesn't want to see this file again till it changes.

There are one or two buttons, depending on the number of files to display. If
there is one file to display, only the Close button is displayed.
If there are more, a Previous button and a Next/Close button are displayed. The
user can move forward and backward between the files using those buttons. If he
is at the last file, the Next button changes to Close and if the user presses it
InitUser exits, updateing the NDS as needed (depending on wether the user
cleared the Checkbox or not).


Printing:

The Print button is always displayed. Right Click opens the Print Setup dialog
which changes the settings for the internal printing mechanism (The hint also
explains this). Left Click prints the current information file.

For all files InitUser first tries to use the default application set up in
Windows to print. If this fails in such a way that InitUser notices, it uses
an internal printing mechanism, which can produce less nice output.

If the external application doesn't print or doesn't exist then files are
printed according to the following:

1. Bitmap files are stretched to fill most of the page and printed without
anti-aliasing. This can produce rather ugly output. MSPaint is used when
installed properly and prints much nicer.
2. All other files are treated as text files and written to the printer like
"copy <file> lpt1:" under DOS would do. If the file was displayed
right-justified then InitUser tries to pad the printout to make it appear
right-justified. This assumes that
  a) the printer uses a non-proportional font
  b) in the text there is no unneccessary whitespace before/after the text in
     each line.

If you want to have fancy printouts you can define a new file extension and
and external application with the "print" operation defined and InitUser will
use your definition.


Command Line Parameters

INITUSER uses commmand line parameters only:
/?              Help - display help screen
/v              Debug - Print verbose debugging info at each step
/f              Force - display all textfiles without regard to timestamps
/nt "text"      ShowNext - text to display near the checkbox
/remove         Remove all InitUser settings from NDS
/@ dir          display all files in dir (except hidden & system files)
/@ file         display file
/@ dir\pattern  display all files in dir matching pattern

/nt defaults to "Show this the next time I login" with hotkey s
Use & for underline (=hotkey) and _ for capital letter
Example: "_thi&s is a text" displays as "This is a text" with an underlined s
and the user can toggle the Checkbox by pressing Alt-s (or clicking on it)

All other parameters are assumed to be files (unless /@ is given, then they
are ignored)

/remove is an exclusive option, e.g. you cannot use it together with any other
option (except /v)

Notes:

The /remove option removes ALL strings beginning with "InitUser." from the
attribute

The help screen also shows what attribute InitUser is using.

The users must have sufficient NDS rights to write to the NDS attribute. If they
do not have the rights, InitUser will not be able to save the seen files. Use
InitUser /? to see what attribute is used in your version of InitUser.

The text files are either right or left justified (each file can have a different
justification). Justification is automatically determined by the first non-empty
line. IF it contains more English characters, the text will be left justified.
Otherwise it will be right justified. (German language people should be aware not
to put too many Umlaute into the first line)

You should use a resolution of at least 800x600 to see the whole window since
the window will fill a 640x480 almost completely. In case you don't see the
buttons, ESC always exits.

In many Windows installations the "print" operation of the notepad application
is defined wrong. It is defined as 'notepad "%1" /p' and should
be 'notepad /p "%1" ' instead to funtion properly. Notepad doesn't recognize
Hebrew text as such and doesn't print it properly right-justified.

I recommend using BMP pictures to display anything which doesn't show or print
normally in text mode. This is the reason why I included the picture feature.
Also good if you want to display some fancy logo for first-time logins.

In some cases /@ X:\somedir doesn't work and display all files in C:\somedir
(Win API bug, I think), use /@ X:\somedir\*.* instead.

You can specify complex commands with parameters and %..% environment vars as
run once command. To do so encapsulate everything in " ". An example to run a
user-setup batch and display files in p:\msg\ is
inituser /ro "%COMMAND% /cp:\usetup.bat" /@ p:\msg\*.*
where %COMMAND% points to the right command.com or cmd.exe etc.

More Examples:

Display some general files and one group-specific file:
inituser p:\msg\newuser.txt p:\msg\announce.txt L:\info.txt
In the loin script you should map L: to someplace different for each group.

Remove all the information stored in NDS by inituser:
inituser /remove
Or if you want to see what you remove:
inituser /v /remove

Check what is stored in the NDS for inituser (without doing anything else):
inituser /v



Copyright:

InitUser is freeware. Only condition on distribution and further use or
modification of the program or it's source code is that my name be mentioned
in it and that the original idea was mine. The source is not freeware, contact
the author about details.


Contact the Author:

Schlomo Schapiro
huji at schlomo dot schapiro dot org

Changes:
v1.1 9.3.1999:   Added print button, but printout is left-justified only.
                 Changed app title to Information
v1.2 27.6.1999:  Made print button work as it should, including external app
                 inclusion. Changed Icon to exclamation mark. Added BMP support.
v1.3 22.11.1999: Made program work flawless (found bug in NWLIB).
                 Removed the print setup dialog since it was useless.
                 Minor improvements in the help dialog box.
                 Put more detailed info in InitUser.RunOnce line in NDS.
                 InitUser now hides TaskBar Icon (to prevent users from closing
                 the program through it and to look better).


To Do
- Full internationalization (w/ external language file)
- Speedup loading
- Adapt to Novell 5 to support more NDS attributes
- make the attribute a command line parameter, now it is hardcoded