Page mcgoodwin.net/pages/readme_vgscrsvr.html
Last update to this page: 31 January 2019
VG Screen Saver is a literate/literary screen saver for people who cherish the written word. It has been written as a labor of love to celebrate great writings of the world, and intentionally contains no flashy non-textual graphics that would distract from the text itself. When first installed, the default quotes database (file VGScrSvr.MD3) is essentially empty of quotes—however, the user may either
Add quotes or other text of his/her own to the installed copy of VGScrSvr.MD3, or
Download and use the full VG Quotes Database (i.e., VGQuotes.MD3, see instructions below).
VG Screen Saver displays these "quotes" (or other textual material of your choice) in a variety of routines, fonts, font sizes, and colors. Quotes may be quite long—they may be up to about 32,000 characters each. For comparison, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is about 15,402 characters long. The user may add to, edit, or delete any quotes in the quotes database (see below).
VG Screen Saver has been developed in Visual Basic 6 and Access 97.
VG Screen Saver was originally designed and tested in Windows NT 4.0, and runs successfully in that operating system. However, starting with version 5.0, it also runs satisfactorily in Windows XP (the minor exception being that occassionally it may not capture keystrokes properly and termination of the screen saver requires moving the mouse). The current version probably runs in Windows 2000 but has not been specifically tested in that OS or in more recent versions of Windows.
VG Screen Saver prefers a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768 but will run at lower resolutions.
If you are reinstalling VG Screen Saver and have made modifications to the quotes database (VGScrSvr.MD3) that you wish to retain instead of using the (empty) version of the quotes database that will be installed, do the following:
(1) Rename your current copy of VGScrSvr.MD3 to VGScrSvr.KEEP
(2) Install the latest version of VG Screen Saver as described above
(3) Delete the new copy of VGScrSvr.MD3 and rename VGScrSvr.KEEP back to VGScrSvr.MD3.
After taking the above steps if applicable, follow the instructions for UN-INSTALLATION (below).
Uninstall any previous version of VG Screen Saver that has been installed first (See UN-INSTALLATION above).
Place VGScrSvr.EXE (a self-extracting ZIP archive file) in an empty temporary directory. Run VGScrSvr.EXE to decompress (extract) the files it contains to the same directory.
Select and run Setup.exe to install the screen saver support files to the final permanent destination directory of your choice. (You should not choose your windows system directory for this permanent destination, or the directory into which you have decompressed the installation files.) After successfully running Setup.exe, you may delete all the files that were added to the temporary directory.
Select Start | Settings | Control Panel | Display | Screen Saver. Select Vgscrsvr as the active screen saver program. Adjust Settings to configure VG Screen Saver as desired.
Be sure that the full path and filename for the quotes database file VGScrSvr.MD3 is present and points to this file.
Be sure that the full path and filename for the Workgroup Information File VGScrSvr.MDW is present and points to this file.
Test VG Screen Saver program with "Preview" and adjust settings with Settings further as desired.
See below about substituting the full quotes database for Screen Saver use.
Read the opening screen while the screen saver is running for additional information on HotKeys and other features available.
You may also press F1 for a summary of the many hot-keys available while the screen saver is displaying quotes. Here are the available hotkeys:
| Key Combination | Action |
|---|---|
| F1 | Show the available HotKeys (this list) |
| Space | Start New Quote |
| Up Arrow | Slow Down Temporarily (this quote only) |
| Shift-Up Arrow | Slow Down (until screen saver exits) |
| Down Arrow | Speed Up Temporarily (this quote only) |
| Shift-Down Arrow | Speed Up (until screen saver exits) |
| Ctrl | Pause (Freeze Display) |
| C | Configure VG Screen Saver |
| N | User may specify Numeric QuoteID and optionally, (after a comma) the routine to display |
| P | Display Previous quote |
| R | Restart Current Quote |
| T | Show Title, Author, QuoteID, and Font Face Press Omit This Font to prevent future display of the current font face. |
| Esc or Alt | Exit Screen Saver |
The screen saver intentionally does not terminate by any key press except <Esc> or <Alt>. However, any mouse movement or mouse click will terminate it. This is to allow you to restart a quote, show the quote title, etc.
You may modify, delete, or add to the quotes in the VG Screen Saver quotes database VGScrSvr.MD3 by opening VGSSEdit.MD3 in MS Access 97 or later version of MS Access (don't convert this file to a later Access version or modify its structure in any way). Using VGSSEdit.MD3 allows all the searching, filtering, and querying capability inherent in MS Access and is therefore preferred if you have MS Access.
If you do not have MS Access, you still have some editing capability of the quotes database using VGSSView.exe. See the separate file VGSSView-Readme.TXT for more information on VGSSView.exe. Searching capability is much more limited in this program.
If the VG Screen Saver is running when you backup your files, say to a tape drive, your backup program will report that it could not backup one or two files ending in .tmp or .ldb. These are only temporary files used solely by the VG Screen Saver and there is no harm in having these excluded from the backup set. On occasion, a backup program will also report that it cannot backup the Workgroup Information File VGScrSvr.MDW. This file is never changed by VG Screen Saver and contains no user-customizable information.
The full VG Quotes Database VGQuotes.MD3 is a separately downloadable and independent file which can optionally be used with the VG Screen Saver—it is not part of the VG Screen Saver distribution package. This Quotes Database contains over 1100 aphorisms, maxims, proverbs, phrases, quotations, poems, speeches, noble and ignoble sentiments, prose selections, and other influential or noteworthy texts from our intellectual, literary, philosophical, political, historical, religious, and scientific heritage. The emphasis is on older citations, partly due to copyright restrictions as well as the personal tastes of the developer and Internet availability.
Citations contained in the quotes database VGQuotes.MD3 are believed to have expired copyrights or to fall within allowable "fair use" limits. In some cases, the copyright status is not known to me and there is therefore a possibility of unintentional inclusion of copyrighted material. If you have responsibility for copyrighted material which you believe to have been inappropriately included or quoted at excessive length in the quotes database, please send notice to the address above and the citation in question will be modified or removed. The full VG Quotes Database VGQuotes.MD3 is made freely available without charge and is not for commercial use. It is not to be redistributed for profit. Many of its quotes have been compiled from the public domain and through the generosity of other Internet sources. To use VGQuotes.MD3 as the quotes database for VG Screen Saver, you may do the following:
(1) Download vgquotes.exe from the mcgoodwin.net website.
(2) Run this self-extracting archive file to extract VGQuotes.MD3 to a temporary directory.
(3) Rename this copy of VGQuotes.MD3 that you just extracted to VGScrSvr.MD3
(4) Delete the old copy of VGScrSvr.MD3 installed during initial VG Screen Saver program setup
(5) Copy the newly renamed copy of VGScrSvr.MD3 to the subdirectory where the VG Screen Saver application was originally installed.
To Uninstall VG Screen Saver
Select Start | Settings | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs, select VG Screen Saver, press Add/Remove
Manually delete the file VGScrSvr.SCR from your Windows System(32) directory.
Optionally, you may manually delete VGRegistry.DLL and VG32.DLL from your Windows System directory. (Caution—delete these only if you are certain you are not using other VG programs)
Select another Screen Saver program in Start | Settings | Control Panel | Display | Screen Saver
(Listing does not include standard MS install, setup, and support files including the VB runtime file)
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| readme_vgscrsvr.html | This file |
| VGSSView-Readme.TXT | Readme file for VGSSView.exe |
| VG32.DLL | Needed for certain features not available in VB (this is automatically installed to the Windows system directory). |
| VGRegistry.DLL | An ActiveX DLL that provides Windows Registry manipulation functions. This is installed to the Windows system32 directory automatically. |
| VGScrSvr.MD3 | The Quotes Database (initially essentially empty of quotes, see above) |
| VGScrSvr.MDW | Dedicated Access 97 Workgroup Information File (or
System DB) (this supplies user name and password for the quotes database) |
| VGScrSvr.SCR | The executable screen saver (this is installed to the Windows System[32] directory automatically) |
| VGSSEdit.MD3 | Use to edit the Quotes database (provides full search and edit capability, requires Access97) |
| VGSSView.exe | Quotes Database Viewer/Editor Program (this has somewhat less editing capability than VGSSEdit.MD3, for users lacking MS Access) |
| VGQuotes.MD3+ | The full VG Quotes Database (see above) |
The current version of the screen saver program no longer has an expiration date, beginning with version 6.0.
VG Screen Saver is copyrighted 1997-2010 by Michael McGoodwin. It is freeware—the user is welcome to use it without cost but may not charge to redistribute it. You may not distribute any component of VG Screen Saver without distributing the entire installation package. You may not alter VGScrSvr.SCR in any way and must acknowledge the origin of the program and provide all of its components including this file if you distribute it. Suggestions and constructive comments would also be appreciated and can be sent to my email address listed on my web site.
Page mcgoodwin.net/pages/readme_vgscrsvr.html
Last update to this page: 31 January 2019