Microsoft KB Archive/171926

= Mac Bookshelf 98: Contents of Read Me Document (Complete Text) =

Article ID: 171926

Article Last Modified on 8/11/1999

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Bookshelf 98 for Macintosh

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This article was previously published under Q171926



SUMMARY
This article contains the complete text of the Read Me file included on the Bookshelf 98 for Macintosh compact disc.



MORE INFORMATION
Readme File ---

This file contains information on the following topics:

1. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR RUNNING MICROSOFT BOOKSHELF - What you need to run Bookshelf 98

2. MEMORY USE - Memory needed to run Bookshelf 98 - Running on low-memory machines

3. PERFORMANCE - Tips on how to increase Bookshelf's speed

4. SCREEN SIZES AND COLOR CONFIGURATION - What makes Bookshelf 98 look best

5. SOUND PROBLEMS - Common problems playing sounds and how to fix them

6. PRINTING AND COPYING - How to print and copy information from Bookshelf 98

7. SCRIPTING - How to automate Bookshelf 98 using AppleScript

8. TROUBLESHOOTING - Known problems and ways to work around them

9. SPECIAL INFORMATION ABOUT INTERNET CONFIG - Information on how Bookshelf 98 uses Internet Config to       access the Internet.

-- 1. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR RUNNING MICROSOFT BOOKSHELF -- To install and run Microsoft(R) Bookshelf(R) 98 you need:

- Any Power Macintosh or 25MHz 68030 Macintosh computer that supports a 256-color, 640x480 (13-inch) or higher resolution monitor - System 7.1 or later - At least 8 MB of random-access memory (RAM) (12MB is recommended for System 7.5 and above) - CD-ROM drive (double-speed or faster)

You can run Bookshelf 98 directly from the compact disc. However, to play the movies and hear the sounds, QuickTime(TM) 2.0 or later must be installed in your System Folder. If Bookshelf 98 can't find these files, it will prompt you to run the Installer. You can also install QuickTime manually by dragging the files from the System Files folder on the CD onto your System Folder icon.

The Bookshelf 98 Installer will add all necessary files to your System Folder. It will also copy the Bookshelf 98 program to a folder on your hard disk titled "Bookshelf 98". Although installing the application on to your hard drive occupies about 8 MB of hard drive space, it makes the program launch and run noticeably faster. The text, sounds, and images remain on the Bookshelf 98 disc, so you still need to insert the compact disk to run Bookshelf.

--- 2. MEMORY USE --- Bookshelf 98 will run on any Macintosh with 8 MB of RAM. However, 4 MB of memory must be free when you launch Bookshelf 98.

Most systems with 8 MB of RAM will not experience problems, but if your system software uses more than 4 MB you may need to adjust memory usage for Bookshelf 98 to run properly. If you have System 7.5 or greater installed on your computer, your system software may take up more than 6 MB of RAM. For users running System 7.5 or greater, we recommend at least 12 MB of RAM.

Some general suggestions for optimizing memory usage follow:

- Run only one application at a time. If other applications are running, close them, and then relaunch Bookshelf.

- Reduce the amount of memory being used by your system software. To do this, return to the Finder and select About This Macintosh... (or About This Computer... if you're running System 7.5.5 or later) from the Apple menu at the top left corner of the screen. The Largest Unused Block needs to be greater than 4096K to run Bookshelf 98. If the only item listed in the About This Macintosh dialog is System Software and the Largest Unused Block is less than 4096K, reduce the amount of memory used by your system software. Refer to your Macintosh documentation for details on how to do this, but some general suggestions follow:

- Open the Memory Control Panel and check the Disk Cache setting. Set the Disk Cache setting to the lowest amount possible.

- Fonts and sounds consume system memory. You can make more memory available by removing those you aren't using. However, make sure that you leave the Arial, Symbol, Times New Roman, and Bookshelf Fonts as these are required by Bookshelf 98.

- Third-party system extensions such as screen savers, fax software, desktop pictures, menu-modifying utilities, and other system enhancements increase the amount of memory consumed by your system software. They may also cause a conflict with Bookshelf. Removing some or all of these extensions will increase the amount of memory available to applications and minimize the risk of conflict. Be sure that you save anything you remove from your System Folder and place it in a separate folder on your hard disk so that you can replace it later. You can use Apple's Extension Manager or an equivalent third-party utility to do this. Please make sure not to remove your CD-ROM driver software, or QuickTime as those extensions are necessary to run Bookshelf 98.

- Turn on Virtual Memory. Virtual Memory allows you to increase the amount of available memory by using space on your computer's hard disk to simulate RAM. Although using virtual memory may slow down performance, the extra available memory may cause applications like Bookshelf 98 to be allocated more memory at start up or allow more applications to be run simultaneously. To turn on Virtual Memory, open the Memory control panel, switch the Virtual Memory radio button to on, and then restart your computer.

Warning: Reducing the minimum size for Bookshelf's memory requirements may cause the program to perform poorly. For example, Bookshelf 98 may not be able to play video clips or enlarge images if it runs out of memory. If you allocate less than 4096K, these problems are likely to result.

For support on Mac OS memory management, please contact Apple Computer, Inc.

3. PERFORMANCE

If Bookshelf 98 seems to be running slowly or its audio and video clips are choppy or interrupted, there are a number of things which may help:

- If you have over 8 MB of available hard drive space, you can install the Bookshelf 98 application to your computer's hard drive rather than running it directly off the CD-ROM. To install the application to your computer's hard drive, double-click the Installer icon on the Bookshelf 98 disc and select Easy Install.

- If less than 5 MB of memory are free when you start Bookshelf, you may notice some performance problems. Check the previous section, MEMORY USE.

- Increase the preferred size for Bookshelf's memory allocation. Microsoft Bookshelf 98 is preset to a suggested memory size of 5000K. If there is sufficient additional memory available to run Bookshelf, you can increase the amount of memory the program requests by selecting the Microsoft Bookshelf 98 application icon on your hard drive, choosing Get Info from the File menu, and then changing the preferred size in the area titled "Memory Requirements".

Note: If the Bookshelf 98 application is running or busy, these fields may be locked. If you encounter this problem, quit Bookshelf, and try again. If this persists, restart your computer and try again.

- If you are using Virtual Memory to expand available memory to more than double physical RAM capacity, you may find that Bookshelf 98 runs slowly. For best performance, turn off Virtual Memory or reduce its allocated size in the Memory control panel.

- Bookshelf 98 is designed to work properly on a CD-ROM drive with a 150K/sec transfer rate or faster. A double-speed CD-ROM drive or one with a faster transfer rate will provide even better performance in some areas. If your CD-ROM drive has a sustained transfer rate of less than 150K/sec, it may not be able to supply audio and video information to the Macintosh at the speed required. This problem can only be fixed by upgrading to a faster CD-ROM drive. If you suspect a problem with your drive, ensure that it is properly terminated and that its software is properly installed. For details on SCSI termination, see your Macintosh or CD-ROM drive documentation, or contact your Apple dealer.

- A dirty or scratched compact disc can cause your drive to perform poorly. Other symptoms are "Cannot Read" error messages and ceaseless spinning of the CD-ROM (these appear to cause the computer to "hang"). Make sure the bottom surface of the Bookshelf 98 disc is clean and undamaged.

- If you are using QuickTime 2.0, the video clips and animations in Bookshelf 98 will run more smoothly if you upgrade to QuickTime 2.5. To install QuickTime 2.5, double-click the Bookshelf 98 Installer icon on the Bookshelf 98 disc, select Customize, and install the QuickTime package that is appropriate for your Macintosh.

QuickTime Support and Upgrades are available on http://quicktime.apple.com.

- 4. SCREEN SIZES AND COLOR CONFIGURATION - On startup, Bookshelf 98 checks your monitor to ensure your computer is set for at least 256 colors. If your monitor is set to a lower configuration, but the settings can be adjusted to run in 256 colors, you will be prompted to change the settings.

Bookshelf 98 will run on any 256-color, 640x480 (13-inch) or higher resolution Macintosh compatible monitor, although Bookshelf's video clips and still images look best in 16-bit color (thousands of colors) or 24-bit color (millions of colors).

Note: Running in 24-bit color (millions of colors) will slow performance and cause Bookshelf 98 to consume memory more quickly. If your Macintosh normally runs in this color mode and you get out of memory messages, you can increase the amount of memory Bookshelf 98 requests by clicking the Microsoft Bookshelf 98 icon, choosing Get Info from the File menu, and then changing the preferred size in the area titled "Memory Requirements".

Bookshelf 98 is not designed to run in black and white, in 16 colors, or on monitors displaying less than 640x480 pixels (e.g., Color Classics, most PowerBooks and all 12 inch Apple monitors).

--- 5. SOUND PROBLEMS --- If the audio in Bookshelf 98 is missing or interrupted, check the following:

- Sounds will be inaudible if the sound level is turned down. To set the sound level, open the Sound control panel and experiment with the speaker volume setting until you find a comfortable sound level. If you set the sound level to maximum, you may get sound distortion, just as you might on a stereo system. With external speakers, be sure they are connected properly and turned on; you can usually adjust sound level with the external speaker volume knob as well as with the Sound control panel.

- If Virtual Memory is enabled on your Macintosh, sounds may be choppy. When Virtual Memory is turned on, sounds are sometimes temporarily stored on the hard disk rather than in physical RAM. For optimal performance, Virtual Memory should be turned off. To disable Virtual Memory, open the Memory control panel, click the Virtual Memory Off button, and then restart your computer.

Note: You must have a sufficient amount of RAM to run your both your System Software and Bookshelf 98 (and any other applications) with Virtual Memory turned off. Also note that it may not be appropriate to turn off Virtual Memory on a Power Macintosh. Please see your manual for more information about Power Macintoshes and Virtual Memory.

- In low memory situations, sounds may not load or play. If you cannot get a sound to play and are sure that your Sound control panel is set correctly, or you are receiving error messages when attempting to play sounds, you may need to allocate more memory for Bookshelf. See the MEMORY USE section for suggestions on how to solve memory problems.

- Some sounds used in Bookshelf 98 are stored on the disc in a compressed format. In order to be played, the sound must be read from the disc and decompressed. Older or slower Macintoshes (such as the Macintosh IIci and Macintosh LC III) may experience interruptions in audio playback.

- In some situations, QuickTime 2.0 and Sound Manager 3.0 may have insufficient system memory available to play sounds. Upgrading to QuickTime 2.5, included with Bookshelf 98, should improve the system's ability to play sounds under these conditions.

- Version 1.5.1 of Connectix RAM Doubler(TM) has a known bug that prevents audio and video clips from playing properly on Power Macintosh models. To obtain upgrade information, contact Connectix Corporation. For RAM Doubler(TM) support see http://www.connectix.com.

- There are some incompatibilities with Now Menus and Bookshelf 98 audio. Adjusting the volume of the audio via the Now Menus customized menus should be avoided while Bookshelf 98 is running. For Now Menus support see http://www.nowsoft.com.

6. PRINTING AND COPYING

You can print or copy from any article within Bookshelf 98 by selecting a range of text and choosing the appropriate command from the File or Edit menu. To copy a media element, select it by holding down the Control key and then click on the image. In the shortcut menu that appears, choose Copy. Please note that sounds cannot be copied due to copyright restrictions.

If you find that printed text is improperly formatted or that special characters do not print correctly, try the following:

- Turn off Background Printing. Bookshelf 98 stores its custom TrueType fonts within the application. This provides Bookshelf 98 access to these custom fonts without taking up space on your hard drive. However, because many printer drivers launch a separate application to manage the printer queue and handle print jobs in the background, printing errors may result when Background Printing is enabled. To disable Background Printing, open the Chooser, select the active printer and switch the Background Printing radio button to off.

Note: If you install the Bookshelf 98 TrueType fonts, Background Printing is fully supported. To install these fonts, start the Installer on the Bookshelf 98 disc, choose Customize from the popup menu, select Bookshelf 98 Fonts, and press Return.

7. SCRIPTING

You can use Microsoft Bookshelf to look up and define words from AppleScript, QuicKeys, Userland Frontier or any OSA-compliant scripting environment. The Microsoft Bookshelf custom AppleEvent suite is defined as follows:

Bookshelf Suite: Events to look up words or phrases using Microsoft Bookshelf

Find: Search for a word or phrase in a Bookshelf reference source Find string [in book] -- Specific reference source to search

Contents: Search for a word or phrase in the table of contents Contents string [in book] -- Specific reference source to search

Define: Define a word or phrase Define string

Enumeration book: A Microsoft Bookshelf reference source

All -- All books contained within Microsoft Bookshelf Dictionary -- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Thesaurus -- The Original Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Quotations -- The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations Encyclopedia -- The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia Atlas -- The Concise Encarta World Atlas Chronology -- The People's Chronology Almanac -- The World Almanac(R) and Book of Facts 1997 Internet -- The Microsoft Bookshelf Internet Directory 98 Computer -- The Microsoft Bookshelf Computer and Internet Dictionary 98

Example:

tell application "Microsoft Bookshelf" activate Contents "Macintosh" in Internet end tell

The above AppleScript code will look up all articles in the Internet Directory that contain the word "Macintosh".

Microsoft does not provide AppleScript support. If you are interested in finding out more about AppleScript, please contact Apple Computer, Inc. or see their web site at http://www.apple.com.

8. TROUBLESHOOTING

If you find that you are experiencing trouble, first check the following:

- Wrong or Multiple Versions of QuickTime(TM) During installation, the Installer checks the versions of QuickTime and Sound Manager present on your Macintosh and, if necessary, replaces them with newer versions. However, the Installer cannot remove older versions if you or another installer program have renamed them. For example, if you renamed an older version of QuickTime to "Old QuickTime", the Bookshelf 98 Installer would install a newer version of QuickTime, but would fail to remove the older version. The same would happen if another installer application placed a file, "QuickTime 2.0" in the Extensions folder. The only QuickTime files should be named, QuickTime(TM), QuickTime(TM) PowerPlug (Power Mac only), QuickTime(TM) Musical Instruments and QuickTime(TM) Settings. To fix this problem, manually remove any renamed copies of these system components and restart your Macintosh.

- Font Display Problems Microsoft Bookshelf 98 uses custom fonts to represent special and international characters. These characters usually don't correspond to special characters within the standard Macintosh character set and will appear as inappropriate or non-printing characters when copied to an application such as SimpleText. However, these special and international characters will print correctly if you print from Bookshelf 98 or install the Bookshelf 98 Fonts and paste into an applications that support Rich Text Format (RTF) such as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works.

- Problems Running Bookshelf on System 7.0 Due to an incompatibility among Microsoft Bookshelf, Apple Guide 2.0, and versions of System 7.0, access to the Bookshelf Guide from within the Bookshelf 98 application has been disabled with this configuration and the minimum configuration for Bookshelf 98 is 7.1. To fix this problem, upgrade to System 7.1 or later.

- Problems installing Bookshelf or changing Bookshelf's memory partition In order to minimize the number of extensions that Microsoft Bookshelf 98 must install in your System Folder, we have built several PowerPC shared libraries into the Microsoft Bookshelf 98 application itself. Since these libraries can stay open even after you quit the application, you may be unable to delete the Microsoft Bookshelf 98 application or edit the application's memory partition sizes in Get Info until you restart your Macintosh.

- Unsuccessful searches in Quick Zip Code In some instances the Quick Zip Code may be unable to suggest a zip code based on a street address alone. In this case, try using a specific city name (spelled correctly) and/or a state name to narrow down zip code information.

- Internet Connection Difficulties Depending on your Internet connection, it may take up to several minutes for your browser to successfully connect with a site that you have launched from the Internet Directory. You should wait to see if the connection is successful before returning to the Internet Directory and attempting to initiate another link. Attempting to connect with multiple Internet sites simultaneously is not recommended.

-- 9. SPECIAL INFORMATION ABOUT BOOKSHELF 98 AND THE INTERNET --

For the online features in Bookshelf 98 to work, you will need access to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP). These online features include URLs in the Internet Directory and in the Help Menu.

You may already have an ISP through your employer or academic institution. However, if you want to use the Internet for personal use, you may need to find an ISP that sells Internet access to the general public. If you use an ISP with proprietary software, be sure to ask if they have a Macintosh version - some are Windows-only - and find out if the Macintosh version has similar features to the Windows version.

Most Macintosh users access the Internet with their modem through a SLIP or PPP account using a freeware control panel (although there are commercial versions and Apple has recently released its own PPP control panel designed for use with Open Transport 1.1.2). Whether you will use SLIP or PPP depends on what software you have and which protocol your ISP supports, but PPP is the more flexible protocol and has lately become much more prevalent. These accounts let you run graphical Internet applications that work and feel just like Macintosh applications should. If your computer has enough memory, you can even run several Internet programs concurrently with Bookshelf.

Setting up a SLIP/PPP control panel and configuring the MacTCP or the TCP/IP control panel (included with Open Transport in System 7.5.2 and later) can be a bit overwhelming. Your ISP should walk you through this process, providing you with critical information like DNS addresses and search domains, as well as the essential phone numbers and modem settings to get you up and running on their service.

When Bookshelf 98 launches an Internet application, the browser assumes that you have a TCP/IP connection already established. Some SLIP/PPP control panels will automatically dial up and initiate a session when you launch an Internet application, but often the time lag required for dialing and negotiating the connection exceeds the timeout on the request. So you should usually connect to your ISP prior to using the Internet Directory or other features that connect you to the Internet.

Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, it may take up to several minutes for your Web browser to successfully connect with a site that you have launched from Bookshelf 98. You should wait to see if the connection is successful before returning to Bookshelf and attempting to initiate another link. Attempting to connect with multiple Internet sites simultaneously is not recommended.

Bookshelf 98 uses software called Internet Config to determine which Web browser should be used to connect to the Web. If you aren't currently using Internet Config, it will be installed for you when you run the Bookshelf 98 Installer. Also your Internet Preferences will be preset to use Internet Explorer to handle the following Internet resource types: Web (http), FTP (ftp), Gopher (gopher), Email (mailto) and Usenet News Groups (news). If you want to use a different browser or override any of these defaults, you can start the Internet Config application and change the Helper application for that resource type.

Note: For more information on Internet Config, please see the User Documentation provided in the Internet Config 1.3 folder.

HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR BROWSER WITH INTERNET CONFIG:

If Internet Config is not set up properly, you may see the following error message:

Internet Config is not properly installed. Please launch Internet Config and ensure that you have a valid helper application selected for this Internet resource type.

Or you may simply click on an Internet Link in Bookshelf 98 and have nothing happen. If this is the case you need to use Internet Config to select your HTTP Helper application. To select the helper application, do the following:

1. Locate and open the Internet Config 1.3 folder on your hard drive.

2. Double-click the Internet Config application icon.

3. In the Window menu, choose the Helpers item.

4. Select the HTTP icon, and then click Change.

5. Click Choose Helper.

6. Navigate to the location of web browser.

7. Select the application, and then click Open.

8. Click OK.

9. On the File menu, click Quit, and then click OK when prompted to  save the changes.

Additional query words: multi-media multimedia multi media

Keywords: kbreadme kbmm KB171926

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