WinEX, a shell for Windows
by Bill W. (libertyandjustice4all@gmail)

Thanks for downloading WinEX. Please be sure to read 'license.txt' before running WinEX.

In this document:
~ Credits
~ Important Notes
~ Known Bugs
~ To-Do
~ The future

~ Credits

* Andrew (ajd344) has let me borrow, use, and abuse the program search database 
  from his ATown Stylus shell for many, many moons. Now it's finally come in
  handy. 

* Icon Selection code is based partially (ok, entirely) on that from 
  Alyce Watson's icon editor. Also, her e-book on Liberty BASIC programming
  has been very useful.

* Brad Moore wrote isfile32.dll, and grc32v4.dll is by Cassio Ferreira.

* And of course, Carl Gundel, without whom we would not have such a simple,
  powerful, and fun language to use.

~ Important Notes

* Be sure to copy your runtime DLLs and SLLs to the WinEX directory. Some
  things (a few configuration applets) will not work.

* WinEX is only tested on Windows XP. However, it should work on Windows 95 
  and later.

* WinEX doesn't automatically set your default browser, email, and media 
  player applications. You'll have to manually edit your prefs.dat file
  to do so. You can find the file in your user directory
  (<wherever WinEX is>\Users\<your username>\prefs.dat).  The first line is 
  your web browser, the second line is e-mail, and the third is your media
  player. If you use web mail, simply type in the URL to your service. WinEX
  will open it in your default web browser.

* Early in development, I tested WinEX on a multi-monitor system. It worked 
  just fine. Since the primary windowing system hasn't been changed 
  dramatically, it should still work. Feedback is appreciated.

* You may re-use this code in your own applications, provided that 
  they are released as open-source, and you allow others to do the
  same. I reserve the right to discontinue releasing source code at
  the end of this contest; and also reserve the right to 
  sell or otherwise license WinEX.
  
Note for judges: I've included a renamed runtime engine. This is for two reasons: 1) management applets are run through it; 2) It has the WinEX icon. Please don't disqualify me... WinEX simply needs it to operate properly. Thanks.

~ Known bugs

* Text for desktop icons is sometimes drawn improperly. I suspect that the 
  algorithim to determine which line to place certain text on is not 
  calculating the cut-off properly.

~ To-do for version 1.1

* Runfirst Wizard - Add more applications to list
* Runfirst Wizard - Allow user to select default browser, email, media player
* Web Updater
* Installer
* Bug Tracker
* Fix Desktop Text drawing bug

~ The future

WinEX is derived from the term 'WINdows EXtended'. But why should developers decide how best to extend it? I want to re-work WinEX to be power by a script engine of some sort. It should be able to manipulate the entire UI. I'm almost thinking that the UI should just be a set of components and scripts, with WinEX providing the engine. After playing around with interpreter technology for a while, I might have some idea of how to do this.

Expanding on that theme is my desire to have an in-built Window Manager... either drawing MS-Windows windows inside of WinEX, or perhaps implementing my own Window Manager. Perhaps even full-fledged WinEX-based applications... but I'm getting too far ahead of myself.