-------------------------------------------------------------------
 LaunchPad v1.2.3
 by Hiromasa Kato (hiro@eng.iastate.edu)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

LaunchPad is a simple Dock-like launcher.

To download, go to

http://www.eng.iastate.edu/~hiro/LaunchPad.html

or BeWare ftp site at

ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/contrib/util/LaunchPad123_ppc.zip
ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/contrib/util/LaunchPad123_x86.zip


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.so
   may be downloaded from

	ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/contrib/libraries/libprefs***

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

 - 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 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. The dropped files are launched
by double-clicking their icons, or through "Launch" (or "Open" if folder)
menu from the pop-up menu.

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 that pane 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.

Although the current version of LaunchPad does a better job at
retrieving icons, you may encounter some glitches. For instance, if
you try putting 'Disks' icon from the desktop, the icon will appear as a
normal folder icon. But 'Disks' folder is anyway on the desktop all
the time, you probably don't need to put that in LaunchPad.

If you drop a symbolic link, LaunchPad will trace the linked-to file
and grabs 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 to make, 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

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 'cause I'm lazy and a lame coder. Keep bugging
me if you desparately need some feautures added. Meanwhile, I'll release the source code
and put it on the web with the version 2. For the time being, I'll send you source files if you
contact me directly. The source code is getting very messy right now, so I don't just want
to put them online as it might show a bad example of BeOS apps.


CONTACT:

Hiromasa Kato (hiro@eng.iastate.edu)
http://www.eng.iastate.edu/~hiro/BeOS.html


REVISION HISTORY:

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.
