WINWHEEL EDITOR

WINWHEEL EDITOR

INTRODUCTION

The WINWHEEL editor allows the user to add, delete, or modify puzzles in

the database file called WINWHEEL.DAT.  You may run the editor as a

stand-alone program in Windows, or access the program while playing

WINWHEEL, just in case you find a spelling error that you wish to correct.

SETUP

A) Shareware version of WINWHEEL and EDITWHEEL:

If you installed WINWHEEL from the shareware version (unregistered

version for evaluation), then you may wish to add an icon to one of your

GROUPS in FILE MANAGER in WINDOWS 3.0 or 3.1.  The procedure is

simple and applies to adding an icon for any program used under Windows.

1. Open the program group where you wish the EDITWHEEL icon to

appear.  To do this, just double-click the left mouse button on the group

of your choice (you may have a GAMES grou 212x2313c p, for example).

2. Now from the PROGRAM MANAGER menu at top left, select the File

option and a drop down menu appears.

3. Select New...

4. Select Program Item and click on the OK button.

5. Now you can either:

i) type in the Drive:\Path\filename.ext in the Command Line box and

press the OK button.  Also type in the Drive:\Path in the Working

Directory box.

or

ii) Click on the Browse key and change to the drive and subdirectory

where you installed WINWHEEL and EDITWHEEL, and select the

EDITWHEE.EXE file.  Click on OK ,and then OK once more to add

the icon for EDITWHEEL to your GAMES group.

B) Registered Version 1.5 or later:

1. The automatic install program is run from Program Manager by selecting

File...

2. Select Run...

3. Type in the drive name where you have inserted the registered

distribution disk (labelled Disk 1: Setup Disk) followed by SETUP.EXE

and press Enter on the keyboard.

4. When asked where to install WINWHEEL and EDITWHEEL, type in the

drive name and path (default is C:\WINWHEEL) and press the OK

button.

5. The setup program will create a group called WINWHEEL and create

the WINWHEEL icon and EDITWHEEL icon.

6.  You may use the click and drag features of Windows if you wish to

move these icons to another group, such as your GAMES group if you

have one.  You can delete the WINWHEEL group after moving the icons

to another group by simply pressing the Delete key on your keyboard

when the WINWHEEL group is the active, open group, and answer Yes

to delete the group.

EDITING THE WINWHEEL DATABASE

Start the editor (referred to as EDITWHEEL here) by double-clicking the

left button on the EDITWHEEL icon in your WINWHEEL or GAMES

group, or by clicking once on the Editor menu option in WINWHEEL.

    There are 4 buttons on the main EDITWHEEL window:

1. Search

2. Add New Puzzle

3. Browse

4. Quit

Search

The search feature allows you to search for the existence of a puzzle in the

database.  When this button is pressed, a yellow window pops up.  You may

type in a puzzle and press OK to start the search or Cancel button if you

change your mind.  You may type the puzzle in all upper case, all lower

case, or a mixture of upper and lower case.  You may include punctuation

marks such as periods ".", apostrophe's " ' ", and ampersand "&" characters

if required.

    With the registered version of WINWHEEL with over 12,000

puzzles, the search may take a few minutes if the puzzle is near the end of

the database or is not in the database at all.  If the puzzle is found, then a

green editing window will apear.  You may click your mouse in the

Category box or in the Puzzle box and change the text.  Press OK to

accept the changes.  You may choose to delete the puzzle using the Delete

button or Cancel if you wish to make no changes to either the Puzzle or

Category.

Note:  Puzzles are limited to a maximum of 40 characters including any

spaces or punctuation marks, and the Category is limited to 20 characters. 

You will be prompted if either of these conditions occurs.

Add New Puzzle

You may add new puzzles to the database by pressing this button on the

main EDITWHEEL window.  A green window will pop up.  The cursor will

be an "I-beam" cursor in the Category box.  Type in the Category (Phrase,

Quotation, Person, Place, Thing, Fictional Character, etc.).  Now move your

mouse cursor to the Puzzle box and click the left button once, or use the

TAB key on the keyboard to move to this box.  Type in your puzzle.  When

you have typed in both the Category and Puzzle, then you may click on the

Add button.  The new puzzle will be compared to the database to search

for duplication.  If a duplicate is found then you will receive an error

message, and you may type in a new puzzle and category or press the

Cancel button to close the Add New Puzzle window.  Puzzles will always be

added to the end of the database, and so will appear in the Browser as the

very last entry.

Browse

The Browse button will open a spreadsheet displaying the first 12 puzzles in

the database.  The menu options duplicate the Search and Add New Puzzle

options of the main EDITWHEEL program window, and adds an option to

Go To a specific puzzle if you know it's entry number. 

    You may browse through the database using the buttons at the

bottom of the spreadsheet.  They function as follows:

Up button:  Moves the spreadsheet up by one entry, that is the new top

entry will one less than the currently displayed top item.

Dn button:  Moves the spreadsheet down by one entry, that is the new top

entry will be one more than the current top item.

Pg Up button:  Moves the spreadsheet up by one page (one page = 12

entries).

Pg Dn button:  Moves the spreadsheet down by one page.

Home button:  Displays the entries from 1 to 12.

End button:  Displays the last 12 entries in the database.

    When you see an entry that you wish to modify, click your mouse

on the number button at the left side of the entry.  A green pop-up window

will let you make changes as in the Search option when a puzzle is found. 

Press the change button when done editing the Puzzle or Category entries,

Delete button to delete the puzzle, or Cancel button to leave the puzzle

unchanged.

    When a puzzle is deleted, the last puzzle in the database replaces

the current puzzles number, and the total number of puzzles is reduced by

one entry.  This method speeds the process of deleting a puzzle without

having to rewrite the database to disk with all entires following the one you

deleted.

    You may leave the Browse spreadsheet either by pressing the Done

button or the Exit option on the menu.

Quit

This button on the main EDITWHEEL window will end the program.  You

will see the Wheel spin, and the EDITWHEEL window will close.

TROUBLESHOOTING

1. Either searching a puzzle, or adding a puzzle locks up the computer:  The

computer is most likely not locked up, but the searching and comparison

processes do take a long time with a database as extensive as in the

WINWHEEL registered version.  You can speed this process up by copying

EDITWHEE.EXE and WINWHEEL.DAT to a RAM DRIVE if you have one. 

Searching will be much quicker since the reads take place from memory

rather than from the hard drive.  Hard drive access is slow, whereas

memory access is very fast.  If you do use a RAM DRIVE with EDITWHEEL,

remember to copy the WINWHEEL.DAT file back to your hard drive when

done editing.  It is recommended that you do not run EDITWHEEL from a

floppy disk.

2. I've deleted all the puzzles in the database and now EDITWHEE.EXE

crashes:  At this time, EDITWHEEL does not support the creation of new

databases.  This option is being considered for a future release of

WINWHEEL and EDITWHEEL.

WINWHEEL and EDITWHEEL are copyrighted programs programs of:

Russell Mueller

507 Washington Gdns

Washington, NJ  07882-9205

USA