Student Control Center v2.1

1998,1999 G. S. Schapiro

Files:

SCC.EXE            Main Program
SCC.INI            Optional Configuration File
*.pas,*.dpr,*.dfm  Delphi source files (if included)


Abstract:

Student Control Center shows a wealth of information taken from NDS. In addition
it allows to define 6 buttons that can execute any external program.


Working:

Upon initialization SCC reads all it's information from the NDS. The home
directory is taken from the existing drive mappings and it's available space
displayed. If no drive is mapped to the home directory, no information will be
displayed. Then SCC.INI is read (if it exists) and the buttons are created
accordingly.


Config file format:
SCC.INI consists of keyword=value pairs. The keywords are ButtonX.Caption,
ButtonX.Hint, ButtonX.Exec and Title ; X can be between 1 and 6.
Title sets the title of the program (and defaults to "Student Control Center").
Info sets an info line at the bottom of the window.
ButtonX.Caption appears on the face of the button (Use & to denote it's hotkey).
ButtonX.Hint appears as hint for the button. Use \n for newline.
ButtonX.Exec is executed upon click.
Account.Unit sets a multiplication factor for Printing Account Balance. All
   values from the NDS are multiplied by this factor before beeing displayed.


Notes:

SCC support NDS only. No bindery support is planned.

External programs are executed in normal window state. Use shortcuts to start
programs minimized.

This program was designed for 1024x768 and looks really ugly on lower
resolutions (especially 640x480)

About the way the account balance is calculated: Two values are read from NDS:
Account Balance and Low Balance Limit. If Balance < Limit SCC assumes that you
count pages UP from 0 to the limit given in Low Balance Limit. In this case
SCC can also calculate the number of pages already used by the user (by
assuming that they start at 0). If, on the other hand, Balance > Limit, SCC
assumes that you count DOWN from an unknown inititial number to 0. In this
case SCC has no way of knowing how many pages the user has printed, it only
tells you how many pages are left to print.
If you don't want to use this automatic reckoning os SCC you can use the
Account.Dir keyword to indicate the counting direction and wether it is till or
from 0 (so that SCC can print totals) or not. The following options are
possible:
Account.Dir=up     Count up, low balance limit is UPPER limit
Account.Dir=up0    Count up from zero, low balance limit is UPPER limit
Account.Dir=down   Count down, low balance limit is LOWER limit
Account.Dir.down0  Count down from zero, low balance limit is LOWER limit (and
                   should be less than zero)
If Account.Dir keyword is missing from SCC.INI, SCC uses it's internal guessing
mechanism.

All values are multiplied by the value given in Account.Unit (unless it is 1).

If the Account.Unit keyword is missing from SCC.INI, SCC assumes it to be 1
(meaning no conversion is done)

All lines not beginning with one of the keywords are ignored. Thus you can
insert comments as plain text (I advice you to mark them with # to help you
see which lines are comment and which aren't)

SCC uses the GetDiskFreeSpace function from the Win32 API. I could not verify
wether it returns more than 2 GB on computers running win95 OSR2, winNT or win98.
I checked it on Win98 and it still returns only 2GB (though I have more free
space on my homedir). Seems to be a typical MS legacy problem. If anybody can
tell me how to do this better, I'll be glad to implement it.

Copyright:

SCC 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.


Thanks To:

Jim Tyson from Devont Software who wrote NWLib and donated a copy of it to me.
http://www.devont.com
sales@devont.com


Version history:
2.1     28.6.1999    Minor improvements: Added Account.Dir feature. Print
                     negative balance in red. Some cleanup.
2.0                  First release
1.0                  Test release

Contact the Author:

Schlomo Schapiro
huji at schlomo dot schapiro dot org


Appendix: - Sample files:

1: SCC.INI
-----------------------------------
Title=My very own Control Center
Info=Use Close to exit this window.
Account.Unit=0.01
Account.Dir=up0
Button1.Caption=&Notepad
Button1.Hint=Open Notepad to edit a text file\nNotepad is the best editor available ever for all times to come :-)
Button1.Exec=notepad
Button3.Caption=&Password
Button3.Hint=Change Password for Novell
Button3.Exec=setpassw
-----------------------------------