-------------------------------------------------------------------
 LaunchPad
 by Hiromasa Kato (hiro@eng.iastate.edu)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

*** wow, it's been almost 2 years since I last touched the source code!!! ***
*** some of the stuff below is not applicable to the current version.     ***

LaunchPad is a simple Dock-like launcher.

To download, go to

http://launchpad.sourceforge.net/

The development site is at

http://sourceforge.net/projects/launchpad/

where you can get information on the public CVS repository and many more.


INSTALLATION:

 - Although LaunchPad runs just fine without libprefs.so, if there is
   libprefs.so installed, it'll use it in favor of built-in static libprefs.
   This way, as newer libprefs (or libprefs compliant preference system)
   becomes available, you will automatically benefit from it. The latest
   libprefs distribution may be downloaded from www.b500.com.

 - Unpack the LaunchPad***.zip and launch LaunchPad.

 - You might want to launch LaunchPad at startup, if so,
   in /boot/home/config/boot/UserBootScript put something like

	if [ -f /boot/home/LaunchPad/LaunchPad ]
	then
		/boot/home/LaunchPad/LaunchPad &
	fi

   where you're going to have to change /boot/home/LaunchPad portion to
   the directory you put LaunchPad in.


USAGE:

It's pretty simple, because it doesn't do much. :-) Simply drag and drop
any app, folder, file, etc. onto the panes. All the functionalities can
be accessed through the pop-up menu, which shows up when you hold the
primary mouse button for a while or immediately when you press the
secondary mouse button. These items can be invoked by a single click.
If it's a file, it gets opened by its preferred app, or if it's a folder
the Tracker opens it.

By default, i.e. when you first launch LaunchPad, there are
eight empty panes. You can insert/remove panes. You can't remove
a pane that already holds an item. You must first remove the file
from the pane before you can remove the pane.

If you drag a file over one of the panes, the pane will be highlighted
(the pane's border will become blue). If it already holds an item,
the dragged-over item will be opened by the item on the pane. If the
pane is empty, the dragged-over item will be placed in it.

If you drop a symbolic link, LaunchPad will trace the linked-to file
and grab that file instead.

NodeMonitor is *NOT* yet implemented. So if you move a file after
dropping it onto LaunchPad, I don't know what's going to happen.

If you have used LaunchPad 1.1.0 or earlier, this version will try to
convert the old format settings. If you experience problems lauching
and quiting LaunchPad, removing the old settings

/boot/home/config/settings/_LP_x-vnd.HK-LaunchPad

and starting over might solve the problem. (I know that's a lame
suggestion, sigh)


WHY DID I WRITE THIS?:

I do appreciate the new Tracker's ability to put files on desktop. But quite
often I found myself putting way too many sym links on desktop and not
organizing them well. So, for me, some sort of constraints is badly needed to
keep myself tidy. That's one reason I sometimes miss pre-DR9 era Dock.
LaunchPad is not feature-rich, nor does it looks that good, but it does the
job (at least for me :-)


KNOWN FEATURES... UH... BUGS

Absolutely nothing. This is a 100% pure bug-free software. If you think you
found any, it's a freature, not a bug.

oh well...

I haven't experienced any serious bug so far. But I've been receiving several
mails saying that LaunchPad crashes during boot. I haven't tracked down what's
really causing these problems, but deleting

	~/config/settings/_LP_x-vnd.HK-LaunchPad

folder seemed to solve the problem for several people, (but not everyone who
kindly reported the problem to me). This was because there was a possible race
condition happening when quitting and saving settings. I fixed this bug, but
there still may be some cases where it crashes during start-up. Please let me
know if you encounter any problem.


CREDITS:

I'd like to thank Jon Watte for his libprefs library.

LaunchPad uses PaletteWindow source code written by
Steve Sprang, the author of PowerBar. Thanks Steve.

And, I am greatly indebted to the following people for their valuable
suggestions and bug reports:

Frederic Tessier
Olivier Wittenberg
Goro Kiyono
Sebastien Bouchex
Matthew Schinkel
Danan Jay Sudindranath
Brandon Itkowitz
Hr. Widing
Patrick Lantz
Trent Trautman
Miguel Ferreira
Andreas Wilcek
Roger Andre Lassen
Will Bierbaum
Jonas Sundstrom

I've tried to incorporate as many suggestions as I could, but some of
the features are still not complete yet. I do keep all the suggestions
and am trying to implement them, so the features missing in this release
will hopefully come with the later versions.


IMPROVEMENTS PLANNED:

The followings are some of the features that I want to incorporate in the
future, not necessarily in the order of importance nor priority. Suggestions
are greatly appreciated.

- Giving users a choice of single-click or double-click launch.
- More customizable appearance.
- Labels for each docked item.
- Support for PowerBar/BeBar-like add-on modules. (with R3 came much more
  sophisticated replicant support. So this feature will be implemented by
  making LaunchPad a BShelf)
- Docks within docks. Something like what Afterstep Wharf does.
- Kerboard navigation, short-cuts.

As you might notice, some of the above items are very trivial, the reason
why they're not implemented as of this release is simply because I'm a lazy
and lame coder. Keep bugging me if you desparately need some feautures added.


CONTACT:

Hiromasa Kato (hiro@eng.iastate.edu)


REVISION HISTORY:

v1.3.0		7/16/2000
	- Released under BSD-like license. Somebody please come up with a cool
	  organization name to put into it.
	- Window dragging and mouse event handling are both async now. These were
	  not available in PR2 where most sources were written.
	- I really don't want to disclose this to you, but, err, I knew I was
	  saving the raw entry_ref's in the settings file, which is a really really
	  evil thing to do. This was finally fixed. This was the whole reason
	  why putting items spanning across multiple volumes didn't always work.

v1.2.4		12/21/98
	- Recompiled for R4 Intel

v1.2.3		5/6/98
	- Simultaneous release of PowerPC&Intel binaries.
	- Fixed the version info in the About box.

v1.2.2		4/20/98
	- Ported (okay, just a simple recompilation) to R3 for Intel.
	- Fixed a bug with moving windows with both right and left mouse
	  buttons held.
	- Fixed a bug so that multiple items can be now correctly dropped
	  and forwarded to docked items.

v1.2.1		12/9/97
	- Fixed a bug that caused unsaved settings when quiting.

v1.2.0		12/6/97
	- You can now have multiple instances of LaunchPad strips.
	- Folders can now be navigated much like you do it in Tracker.
	- Fixed a very stupid bug that caused malloc error when quitting.
	- A little bit better icon handling. But this is only because some
	  of the special icons are hard-coded, (bummer!).

v1.1.0		7/22/97
	- You can now put folders and actually open them.
	- Somewhat better icon retrieving.
	- Allows horizontal/vertical placement of panes.
	- Static version of libprefs is included, just in case
	  libpref.so is not installed

v1.0.0		6/12/97
	- Initial revision.

vi: set ts=4: $Id$