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When an application starts up, it accesses several INI files. LEASTART.INI, LEASYS.INI, various subroutine library Unit INI files and finally, the application's own program INI files are accessed, to set system and program initial conditions.
Initially used by MS-Windows 3.1, INI files live on as a simple and convenient way of providing initialisation information to programs through a standard text file format. Files contain sections, which start with a section name in square brackets. Within the sections, identifiers are associated with values. Free form text is also allowed and comments are any text preceded by the semicolon sign.
Example of an INI file section:
[mysection] ident1=value1 ident2=value2 [anothersection] ident3=value3
LEASTART.INI specifies the directories that the Lynx System uses. For more information see LEA System Installation - System, data and user directories.
LEASYS.INI defines system information common to all programs, such as the help system and the languages in use. It contains standard system messages used by Lynx system libraries.
LIBRARY INI files are used by many programs which share configurations or language-dependent messages with other programs.
The PROGRAM INI file - every Windows-based Lynx program has a corresponding INI file. The PROGRAM INI file contains program specific information, messages, menus and parameter set-up pages.
Executing programs search for each of the INI files they require in the following directories:
This search order allows users to override system settings by using customised INI files. You can customise INI files using the LEACfg utility.
Information in the LEASYS.INI [global] section can be overidden by values set in the application's own [local] section. The global section contains values common to all Lynx programs - these can be similarly named values in the PROGRAM INI file. The global section is not language dependent.
The first section of a Lynx INI file is always [lynx] and contains comments, version information etc. The version key defines a string which identifies a range of version numbers of the INI's associated module which are valid.
This section describes the standard menu items which appear in Lynx programs.
The File Menu
This invokes file
handling functions, including standard system Open and Save dialogs
The Parameters Menu
This calls the
Lynx parameter editor, PrmEdit, for editing, loading
and saving an application's parameter files
The Help Menu
This invokes online help for the
application:
-
displays help for the task underway, or the control that last received input
focus.Lynx applications use customised Open and Save file dialogues to enable you to quickly navigate around the filesystem.
The dialogues contain all the standard controls that you expect to find on a file selection dialogue, and you can select files, change folder and create new folders using these controls. The button at the top-left of the dialogue provides access to a list of 'favourite' folders which you can maintain, to allow you to quickly switch between folders in different parts of your filesystem or network.
This button displays pop-up menus containing a list of folders. Select a folder to change directly to that folder.Click on this button with the left mouse button to display your favourite folders list. This list of folders is stored in the file USER.INI in the your CUSTOM directory (specified by either the networkpath or the localpath key in the LEASTART.INI file. If the USER.INI file does not exist (or contains no valid folder paths) then no menu will be displayed.
You can customise the favourite folder list by clicking 'Manage Favourite Folder List' at the bottom of the displayed menu, to display the Manage Favourite Folders Dialogue (see below).Click on this button with the right mouse button to display the LEA System folders list - the list will contain the LEA System directory (which contains all the LEA program files) - specified by the syspath key in the LEASTART.INI file, the LEA local directory (which contains customised LEA files and, if defined, the network user's directory.
The Manage Favourite Folders dialogue is dispalyed from Lynx open/save as dialogues and directly by the Lynx Launcher application. You can change the default starting directory and set a list of quickly accessible folders for use by all Lynx applications.
The Add
button displays a folder-browse dialogue to add a folder to the list. You can also drag a folder icon from an Explorer window to add it to the list.
The Removebutton will delete the highlighted folder from the list, but will not delete the folder from the filesystem. You can also drag a folder off the list window to remove it from the list.
The Upand Down
buttons can be used to move items within the list.
Double-click on one of the folders in the list to open an Explorer view of the folder.Folders which are not accessible, or which no longer exist, will not automatically be deleted from the list, but will be marked with an exclamation
icon, and will not appear in the drop-down menu used by file selection dialogues. The first folder in the list is the initial folder that will be used by all Lynx file selection dialogues.
Click OK to save the list.
The system unit LEASYS may report the following errors.
LEA Start-up file not found.
The
program could not find the INI file used for starting the LEA system,
LEASTART.INI. This should be located in the PC's Windows directory
(usually C:\WINDOWS for a Windows 95/98/ME PC, or C:\WINNT on
Windows NT/2000). If you get this message, LEA has probably not been properly
installed on this machine, or the setup has been corrupted subsequent to
installation. See Example LEASTART.INI
file and System Installation
System INI file not found
The
application cannot find the file LEASYS.INI, which contains default
language and help settings for all LEA applications. By default all LEA INI
files are located in the LEA system directory, usually called \LYNXSYS,
which is specified in the LEASTART.INI
file, however, customised INI files may be located in directories which are
searched before the standard location.
Applications will look in the
following directories for the specified INI file:
System Help dir not specified
The
System Help directory should be specified in the LEASTART.INI file,
located in the PC's Windows directory. This file should contain an entry in the
[general] section, showing where the LEA help files are located. See
Example LEASTART.INI file (below) and
System Installation
[lynx] ; All LEA INI and parameter files start with [lynx] ; All lines starting with a semi-colon are comments [general] syspath=C:\Lynxsys ; syspath is the directory containing all the LEA executables, ; dynamic link libraries and INI files helppath=C:\Lynxsys\docs ; helppath is the directory containing LEA help ; files (usually HTML files) localpath=C:\data ; localpath is the directory used to store local ; LEA configuration and temporary files ; For optimum performance, it should be a directory ; on a local hard disk networkpath=k:\users ; networkpath is optional ; when installed on a network, networkpath can be used to point ; to a directory used to store machine-independent profiles for each user. ; The networkpath should contain a subdirectory for each user, which will contain ; LEA configuration settings and default parameter files. ; If networkpath is not set, then the localpath (defined above) is used to store ; LEA configuration settings.
Library Help file not found
The program cannot find a Help file for one of the subroutine libraries
that it is using (the name of the missing file is in the error message). This
file should be in the LEA system help directory, normally called
\LYNXSYS\DOCS. Programs will search for this file first in the current
directory, then in the directory from which the program was invoked and finally
in the LEA system help directory.
Library INI file not
found
The application cannot find an INI file for one of the subroutine
libraries that it is using (the name of the missing file is in the error
message). By default all LEA INI files are located in the LEA system directory,
normally called \LYNXSYS, which is specified in the LEASTART.INI file, however, customised INI
files may be located in directories which are searched before the standard
location.
Applications will look in the following directories for the
specified INI file:
Program .INI file not found
The
system is trying to start an application program or unit, but cannot find the
necessary .INI file. This will normally have the same name as the program or
unit, ie for AAAA.EXE it would be called AAAA.INI and will
be searched for first in the current directory, then the program's start-up
directory and finally the LEA System directory (LYNXSYS).
Error getting help for an Application
message
While trying to provide help for an application message, one of
the following occurred : The system help browser could not be found, the
applications help file APPNAME.HTM (where APPNAME is the name of the
program executable file) could not be located, or there was an error in the
format in the specified [section] of the application's INI file. The
standard help file directory is LYNXSYS\DOCS. This error message is
called from ShowSysHelp via ErrDlg in the LEASYS unit.
Error getting help for a system
message
While trying to provide help for a system message, one of the
following occurred : The system help browser could not be found, the
LEASYS.HTM system help file (this file) could not be located, or there
was an error in the format in the specified [section] of the
application's INI file. The standard help file directory is
LYNXSYS\DOCS. This error message is called from ShowHelp via
ErrDlg in the LEASYS unit.
Help file not found in path
The
system help file LEASYS.HTM (this file) could not be found. If you get
this message, LEA has probably not been properly installed on this machine, or
the setup has been corrupted subsequent to installation. See
System Installation
INI file version mismatches module
The program (or LEA library) INI file referred to in the error message does not
match the version number from the program executable (or LEA subroutine
library). The error is generated by RegisterLEAINI when a module is
initialised, if the string in the version= key in the [lynx]
section of the INI file does not match the calling module's version number.
There are a number of possible reasons for this error; the software has not
been properly installed, an untested INI file is being used, or there are
conflicting versions of programs installed on the PC.
System INI file, browser not defined.
In the [help] section of the current INI file, the browser= key
specified a help browser type that is not defined in the [helpsystems]
section of the system INI file LEASYS.INI. This error message can occur
at initialisation, or on a language change.
Value entered is not an integer
Returned
by LEASYS InputSmallInt procedure when an attempt is made to enter a
text string which is not an integer
Integer outside allowed range
Returned
by LEASYS InputSmallInt procedure when an attempt is made to enter an
integer value outside the specified range
File execution errors
The following error messages may be
reported by the LEASYS Exec_File function which launches a new
application as a separate process.
Error opening file
Check that the
file exists. The file may be locked open by another user, or by another
application.
Error saving file
Check that the
destination is not a read-only file and that you have permissions to write into
the folder.
Error printing file
The file may
be too large to print.
