LinuxTaRT v2.20 - the definitive e-mail signature program for Linux
-------------------------------------------------------------------
               TaRT - The Automatic Random Tagline
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction:

As some of you may know, I first wrote TaRT in Borland Turbo Pascal for
MS-DOS. That version eventually became the TaRT II that many use in MS Windows
95/NT/98.

The 97-98 school year was my first year as a Comp. Sci. student at Acadia
University here in Nova Scotia. At the time I was already quite familiar
with the Linux OS, and I was pleased to see it being used as the platform in
which our course in C programming was taught.

As I got more and more into C programming, I began to use Linux much more than
I had before (mostly due to that fact that I finally had a PC with the space
and speed to run it in a comfortable way). Since I began to use Linux almost
exclusively, it seemed necessary that my e-mail here would also have my
standard TaRT signature appended. So I delved into my limited C vocabulary and
made much use of the Linux man pages for C functions. Finally I arraived at a
nicely working, fairly robust, version of TaRT for Linux (aka LinuxTaRT).

-----

Notes:

LinuxTaRT has undergone many significant changes since v1.00 - it now no
longer assumes that the file .TaRTrc is located in the same directory as TaRT
itself. It now looks for .TaRTrc in the directory pointed to by the $HOME
environment variable (i.e. the current user's home directory).
LinuxTaRT 2.00 also provides the ability to use completely customizable
signature layout via a definition file (explained below...)
LinuxTaRT 2.20 provides special date functionality (explained below...)

Another note for users of 1.05 or earlier, is that your current .TaRTrc file
will no longer work as it is, To fix this, simply add the text CUSTOM1=,
CUSTOM2=, SIGFILE=, and TAGFILE= to the beginning of the respective lines in
the file. You must add END-INI as the last line of the file as well
(alternatively, you can run the new interactive setup util, TaRT -s).

I changed the .TaRTrc file to this structure because I wanted to implement a
more reliable way of dealing with the settings. These modifications also allow
the entries to occur in any order, and make it easier to implement a built-in
setup util (again, see below).

The .TaRTrc file allows the use of comments by inserting a pound or
"hash" sign # in front of any text that you want to be a comment.

LinuxTaRT has fairly self-explanitory help accessable by using the --help or -h
command-line arguments.

Since TaRT now checks for .TaRTrc in the users home directory, TaRT can be
placed in a user accessible folder like /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin.       
Then an entry can be added to your .login file or crontab to frequently create
a new signature.

-----

Explaination of custom file:

By running TaRT with  +cust  it will create your signature based on the layout
in the file specified as your Custom Layout File in the setup. LinuxTaRT can
use custom files directly from TaRT II for MS Windows provided the DOS linefeeds
and CRs are converted to UNIX newlines.

The following format strings are allowed:

	%c1	all occurances will be replaced by text in Custom Text 1
	%c2	same as above but Custom Text 2
	%dt	replaced with todays date
	%ib	the current time in Internet TimeBeats
	%12	the current hour in 12-hour time (1 <= n <= 12)
	%24	the current hour in 24-hour time (1 <= n <= 24)
	%mn	the current minute
	%ap	"AM" or "PM"
	%hr	horizontal line (64 chars in length)
	%tg	a randomly selected tagline from the database
		If more than one occurance each will be randomly
		chosen
	%ut	for systems that have the /proc filesystem, this
		will be the uptime in hours for the system
	%vi	LinuxTaRT version info

Any plain text is directly copied to the signature file. Note that
using custom definitions voids the 64 char line limit; Plain text longer
than 64 chars is still copied to the signature file. Custom layouts
also do not support centering.

-----

Explaination of special dates:

New to version 2.20, LinuxTaRT provides the use of special dates which have
been in the MS-DOS/Windows versions for some time now. Basically, special
dates are used to cause the tagline to be a string of your text when ever the
current date matches a specified date. This can be used to have a special
message displayed on significant dates such as your birthday or holidays.

To setup special dates, create a new file and add entries like the following:


01/01:Happy New Year!!
04/12:This text will appear on April 12th


Note:	Any text not of the above format will be treated as a comment.
	Comments can be placed after entries by placing a # directly after
	the entry text.

Run the setup utility and tell TaRT that this file exists.

If you want special dates turned off temporarily, running TaRT with -sd  will
make TaRT ignore special dates.

If your custom signature contains two taglines, and a special date is
encountered, the first occurance of the %tg tag will be replaced with the
special date text, any subsequent ones will be a random tagline as always.

-----

In store for future versions of LinuxTaRT...

-Setup utility will save version, date, quiet, custom definition and
 centering preferences.
-More utilities to deal with the tagline database.
-Eventually hoping to make an X11 based setup.
-Other features suggested by users... please, send your comments.

-----

And of course, please report any bugs you found, what you were doing when they
occurred, and if you can reproduce them.
Send bug reports, questions, comments, etc, to 031233v@dragon.acadiau.ca

I respond to all e-mails personally, and I try to reply within 2 days.

-----

Manditory legal mumbo-jumbo...

I have made every effort to ensure that all code in TaRT is safe, in
that it shouldn't crash the system or damage any files. Since humans aren't
perfect, however, programs often aren't either (look at Win95 :). With that in
mind, neither Mark Veinot, nor MV GrafX can be held responsible for any damages
caused to your system or data loss due to the use or misuse of LinuxTaRT.

-----

Now that that's over, thank-you for trying TaRT. I hope you find it to be of
use. I've always distributed TaRT as FREEWARE, as of 2.01, I am distributing
under the GPL.

Hope to hear from you,
MV GrafX Productions copyright (c) Mark Veinot 1999
