Starsky v 1.4 by D.Perks Starsky is a small utility which allows you to access most of the text, picture and sound information on Hutchinson Encyclopedia CD. It was writen in E (thanks to Wouter van Oortmerssen) and has been compressed using PowerPacker (thanks to Nico Francois). With support files (iff.library and Dsound) it takes up a mere 15K. Iff.library should be copied to your libs: directory. Dsound copied to C: directory. Starsky accesses most but not all the text entries. It does not cover the map entries. Perhaps its greatest use is the text and picture save facility. Copyright of the information contained on the Hutchinson Encyclopedia CD must be assumed and therefore any redistribution of that data is subject to relevant legislation. Starsky itself is released as Freeware. Starsky may be launched from a cli or workbench: From cli an optional search word may be used: Starsky as in Starsky mozart Otherwise you should use the Find string gadget to select a keyword. Please remember the use of Right Amiga X to clear string. Right Amiga Q to recall string. Shift Cursor keys, start/end of string. If a word is found which satisfies your search word then this will be typed in the index bar below the gadgets. If your search word is not found the index will show the entry after the search failed. Search failure is based on the first four letters in your keyword. Rather than search the whole database, Starsky uses search offsets based on the first character of the searchword supplemented by the second character if that is greater than e or o. This means that most entries are accessed in approximately 5 seconds. Read will access the text associated with the current index word. If the text is too large to fit in the available window then a scroll gadget is activated allowing you to move up and down through the text. (Starsky will accept either 60 or 80 character text as set by preferences.) In addition Print and Save gadgets are activated allowing you to print to your selected printer or save to a disk file. Save puts up a string gadget, which by default saves to hutch.doc If the arp.library is available then Starsky will use the arp file requester for saving. You can scroll through the index using the < > gadgets. << and >> will scroll by around 40 entries. If a picture is available for the encyclopedia entry then the View gadget will be activated. Viewing uses the Iff.library which should be included with this package. If no picture is chosen the library will not be loaded. Click LMB to close picture. The program waits until the picture is closed. Click right mouse button to save the picture (screen must be active). Default - hutch.iff If a sound sample is available then Starsky will attempt to play it using a stand alone player (Dsound by Dave Schreiber). Starsky expects Dsound and Run to be available in a valid path (eg C: ). I intend to continue developing this program if only because its 'multimedia' requirements have made it such an excellent learning vehicle. I hope you find this program useful. Any feedback, bug reports etc to D. Perks Fido 2:253/179.0 24 St Ives Close Stafford ST17 0HD UK