A: It's ready now!
A: I am currently aware of the following mail and news applications which can be configured to use Kookie Jar as a signature generator: Forte Agent, Eudora, Netscape Messenger, Pegasus Mail, The Bat!, MS Outlook and MS Outlook Express. Configuring some of them is a breeze, others may require a little twiddling. For details, see information on configuring email and news clients.
If you are using an email or news program not listed here, and you have managed to configure it for Kookie Jar's signatures, please let me know, so that I can update the list.
A: Please see Information on configuring email and news clients, or the file "how to configure email client.txt" installed with Kookie Jar 6.0.
A: By default, KookieJar skips all blank lines when saving your signature. This is because such blank lines often occur as a result of an error in generating the signature. For instance, if you place an %AUDIOCD token in the template, but there is no CD present in the CD-ROM drive, the token will be replaced with an empty string, resulting in a blank line. However, this setting also makes KookieJar skip any blank lines that you included in the template on purpose.
If you do want KookieJar to include blank lines in a signature: Open the Edit Signature dialog box (press F4), then click the "Settings" tab, and uncheck the "Skip generated blank lines" box. Note that this is a per-signature setting, so you will have to repeat the procedure for all signatures you have defined in KookieJar.
A: Error 32 is "File access denied", Outlook Express is locking the signature file, so KookieJar cannot delete it and create a new one in its place. Microsoft programs are notorious for locking files even when they're not using them. I'm afraid there's little that KookieJar can do here; if the file is locked, no other program can change its contents. You can turn off the error message (in the Preferences dialog box, "General" tab, turn off the "Alert on signature failures" option, so it won't bother you anymore), but the signature will not be updated as long as Outlook Express is running.
You could use KookieJar with the "/exit" command-line switch, as described in Help, so that the program starts up, creates a new set of signatures and exits automatically. You would lose the frequent update of the signature that way. Or, you can keep KookieJar running, but turn the timer off, and generate new signatures manually, only when Outlook Express is not running.
You can also experiment a little - maybe the signature file is not locked ALL the time - maybe OE locks it only when composing or sending email? In that case, you could use KJ normally, just set a longer timer interval (15 or 30 minutes, say) to minimize the chance of a new sig being saved while you are writing or sending a message. I can't test this here, because I'm not using OE, but it's something to try.
A: Not directly, but it can be done. There is a freeware (GPL) plugin for WinAmp, gen_np which saves the track and artist information to a text file. Gen_np can also generate the "now playing:" information from the currently playing CD, if you use WinAmp as your CD Player application - that way, you can use it instead of KookieJar's built-in CD Player support. You can configure the plugin to save the information you wish to include in your sigfile, and specify the location of the file where the information should be saved. Note the name of the file, and use the %EXTFILE token in your KookieJar template to insert that file in the signature. Download the gen_np plugin from WinAmp's site.
By default, the gen_np plugin saves information to a file called "C:\np". To use this file, enter the following text in your template:
%EXTFILE{C:\np}
Or, open the Signature properties dialog box (F4), click the "Templates" tab, click one of the "Edit..." buttons, and then pick the EXTAPP token from the list. Click the Insert or the Append button, and locate the C:\np file in the dialog box.
Notes: You can configure the gen_np plugin to erase the information file when WinAmp stops playing. That way your signature will be kept current, and no text will be inserted if WinAmp is not actually playing. Also, there seems to be another plugin that performs a similar task, but I haven't tested it. You can download it from WinAmp's site.
A: Unfortunately, no. Media Player Deluxe stores your CD information in an MS Access database file (DeluxeCD.mdb). Accessing this file would require some real database programming (which I know nothing about!) and installing the whole Borland Database Engine on your machine - several megabytes of bloat, just for a small signature generator! This, obviously, makes no sense at all. However, since KookieJar's source code is now available, nothing stops you from downloading it and adding the capability, if you can program in Delphi.
A: Because KookieJar now supports multiple tagline files and multiple signatures, its configuration is a little more complex than in the previous version. For clarity, I had to divide all the configuration settings into three groups. Each group has its own dialog box, invoked by a menu command or a keyboard shortcut:
Tooltips: when you pause the mouse cursor over any setting in these dialog boxes, a tooltip is displayed which explains the meaning or function of the setting.
A: When you run the program for the first time, one (default) signature will already be defined; its name will be displayed at the bottom of the main screen. So instead of creating a new signature, we'll modify the one that already exists.
That's it. When you are returned to KJ's main screen, press Left/Right arrows (or click the arrow buttons) just to see if KJ correctly displays quotes from your file. Or press Space to get a random quote. (KJ will do this automatically when creating new signatures; this is just to test if it works). Press "V" to display the signature KJ has generated.
A: Everywhere :) Run a Google search for "taglines" or "favorite quotes", and you'll find hundreds of listings. Keywords such as "Fortunes" or "fortune cookies" might work even better. Or, try the following sites:
A: This information was included in the old help file for version 5.9, but for some reason I managed to omit it from the new Help file. Here's a list of supported command-line switches.
-exit
Tells KookieJar to create and save all the configured signatures and exit immediately. This switch is useful if you want to use KJ, but don't want to keep it running all the time. Add the switch to the properties of the shortcut used to start KookieJar, and it will do its job quietly and quit.
-min
Starts kookieJar minimized.
-debug
Enables debug information (not much; this was used during development and isn't very useful any more)
-nohot
Disables the activation hotkey
-nostart
Tells KookieJar not to generate signatures at startup. (This is better done by disabling the "Generate new signature at startup" option in each signature's properties.)
To specify a command-line switch permanently, you can add it to the shortcut you use to start KookieJar. Right-click the shortcut and select "Properties" from the context menu. In the "Target" field, add the switch (or switches) after the full path to kookiejar.exe. For example:
"C:\Program Files\KookieJar6\kookiejar.exe" -exit
A: Yes, use the -exit switch on command line. Please see the previous answer.