      ______              ___________________              ______
      >     |____________|   Announce 1.00   |____________|     <
      ~~||~~|  Centurion |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| 2:2502/666 |~~||~~
        ||   ~~~~~~~~~~~~                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                     CENTURION                     ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                        -*-                        ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
	||		     Announce 1.00                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
	||	  Astrowar In-game Announcement Add-on       ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||          Copyright (C) Damian Walker 1997         ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                        -*-                        ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                    USER MANUAL                    ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                  .   |                            ||
        ||                     \|/    *     +                ||
        ||                    --+--                          ||
        ||               +     /|\            .              ||
        ||                      |    .  +                    ||
        ||                  *   |          *                 ||
        ||                        ().                        ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||                                                   ||
        ||   ____________                     ____________   ||
      __||__|  Copyright |___________________|    1997    |__||__
      >     |~~~~~~~~~~~~| (C) Damian Walker |~~~~~~~~~~~~|     <
      ~~~~~~              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~              ~~~~~~
.hAnnounce 1.00 - User Manual
.fContents
Announce 1.00 - Astrowar In-game Announcements Add-on

Copyright (C) Damian Walker 1997

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston,
MA 02111-1307, USA.

SECTION 0_____________________________________________________________
                                                              Contents

1.	INTRODUCTION TO ANNOUNCE
1.1.	What is Announce?
1.2.	What You Need to Run Announce
1.3.	Acknowledgements

2.	INSTALLING AND RUNNING
2.1.	On Unpacking... What You Should See
2.2.	Posting a Message

3.	RECOMPILING THE SOURCE CODE

A.	CONTACT DETAILS

.fIntroduction                                                       %2d
SECTION 1_____________________________________________________________
                                              Introduction to Announce

This section of the manual introduces you to the program, and gives
some details of the program's requirements.

1.1. What is Announce?

Announce is an add-on program for the Astrowar play-by-mail game.  Its
purpose is to allow the game moderator to post announcements in a game
without having to play it.  It also allows moderators playing their
own games to post important announcements without revealing their
empire's existence to others (and just as importantly, without
destroying their own anonymity).

1.2. What You Need to Run Announce

You need an Announce executable in order to run the game.  If you are
using a binary distribution, it would come with an executable.  If you
are using the source code distribution, you will have to build an
executable yourself as described in section 3.

You also need a full working installation of Astrowar, along with any
interface program(s) you plan to use.  Before running Announce, the
game you wish to post an announcement into must be up and running, and
must have people already playing.  Announcements go only to existing
players; you can't post an announcement to a new, empty game in the
hope that players subsequently joining the game will receive it.

There may be other hardware or software requirements, but these will
be version-specific.  Any extra requirements will be described in your
binary distribution's 'read.me' file.

1.3. Acknowledgements

Thanks must go the the program's beta testers for checking that the
program works.  The testers of the DOS 386 version are Paul Elliott
and Sy Hughes.

.fInstalling and Running                                             %2d
SECTION 2_____________________________________________________________
                                                Installing and Running

2.1. On Unpacking... What You Should See

When unpacking one of the binary distribution archives, you should see
the following files:

	announce	or announce.exe, the executable
	announce.doc	this manual
	file_id.diz	the archive description
	read.me		any version-specific information

If possible, these should all be placed in the main Astrowar
directory, although you may have to rename the 'read.me' if you want
to keep that file along with the 'read.me's from other packages.

There is no configuration required for this package.  The only thing
Announce needs to know is the name of the log file, which it obtains
from Astrowar's own configuration file 'astrowar.data'.  Everything
else is supplied as environment variables, or on the command line.

2.2. Posting a Message

The only action supported by the current version of Announce is the
posting of a single message to every empire in the game.  In order to
do this, use the following command:

	announce post <filename> -game <game>

where <filename> is the name of the file you want to post as a
message, and <game> is the name of the game you want to post it in.
<filename> is optional, and if you leave it out, Announce will attempt
to load the message from the file 'message.txt'.

Another parameter you might need is the '-path' parameter, which works
in exactly the same way as Astrowar's -path parameter.  After the
-path you place the full pathname of the Astrowar configuration and
game list files, complete with trailing slash or backslash (your
operating system's directory separator).  Using '-path' allows you to
run Announce from outside its own directory.

An alternative to the '-path' parameter is to make use of Astrowar's
environment variable, imaginatively named ASTROWAR.  If the ASTROWAR
environment variable is set, Announce assumes it to be a directory
name, pointing to Astrowar's files like the parameter to '-path'.
Again, a trailing slash or backslash is needed.

.fRecompiling the Source Code                                        %2d
SECTION 3_____________________________________________________________
                                           Recompiling the Source Code

If you are using a source code distribution of Announce, you will
obviously need to recompile it before using it.  In order to recompile
the source, you need your compiler and a version of the utility
'make'.  Alternatively, if you are using an integrated development
environment (IDE) or GUI then you can create a project using that, but
this section assumes you are using 'make'.

First, you must choose an appropriate makefile from those provided.
If you cannot find one for your platform, you will have to modify one
of the ones provided into something appropriate to your platform.

Secondly, you need to take one of the 'platform.*' files and rename
that as 'platform.h', or in operating systems that allow this, create
a symbolic link to it as 'platform.h'.  Again, if you can't find one
that's suitable you'll have to modify one of the existing ones into
something you can use.  These files contain platform specific details
such as definitions of case-insensitive comparison functions.

Once you've done this, you can go ahead with the recompile, using a
command like the following:

	make -f makefile.386

This example compiles the DOS 386 version.  Once you've taken this
step, you should have an 'announce' executable.

.fAppendix A - Contact Details                                       %2d
APPENDIX A____________________________________________________________
                                                       Contact Details

Contacting the Author: Fidonet users can get in touch with me by
writing to Damian Walker at 2:2502/666.  Internet users can get in
touch at the Internet equivalent of the address, which is
damian.walker@f666.n2502.z2.fidonet.org.  This goes through a
Fidonet-internet gateway so response might be slow.  There is an
Astrowar web page:

	http://www.bsnet.co.uk/net2502/centurion/astrowar.html

which should contain my proper Internet address at any given time (if
I have one).  My Internet address is more likely to change than my
Fidonet one.

Don't hesitate to get in touch if you have queries or comments about
this program, or about Astrowar itself or any of the other
Astrowar-related programs I maintain.