Portable AbiWord Launcher 1.1.3
===============================

Copyright (C) 2004-2005 John T. Haller
Additional ideas from tracon and mai9

Website: http://portableapps.com/portableabiword

This software is OSI Certified Open Source Software.
OSI Certified is a certification mark of the Open Source Initiative.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA.


ABOUT PORTABLE ABIWORD
======================
The Portable AbiWord Launcher allows you to run AbiWord from a removable drive whose letter changes as you move it to another computer.  The program can be entirely self-contained on the drive and then used on any Windows computer.


LICENSE
=======
This code is released under the GPL.  The full code is included with this package as PortableAbiWord.nsi.


INSTALLATION / DIRECTORY STRUCTURE
==================================
By default, the program expects one of 4 directory structures:

-\ <--- Directory with PortableAbiWord.exe
  +\abiword\
  +\settings\

OR

-\ <--- Directory with PortableAbiWord.exe
  +\PortableAbiWord\
    +\abiword\
    +\settings\

OR

-\ <--- Directory with PortableAbiWord.exe
  +\PortableApps\
    +\PortableAbiWord\
      +\abiword\
      +\settings\

OR

-\ <--- Directory with PortableAbiWord.exe (PortableApps, for instance)
  +\Apps\
    +\PortableAbiWord\
      +\abiword\
  +\Data\
    +\PortableAbiWord\
      +\settings\


It can be used in other directory configurations by including the PortableAbiWord.ini file in the same directory as PortableAbiWord.exe and configuring it as details in the INI file section below.  The INI file may also be placed in a subdirectory of the directory containing PortableAbiWord.exe called PortableAbiWord or 2 directories deep in PortableApps\PortableAbiWord or Data\PortableAbiWord.  All paths in the INI should remain relative to the EXE and not the INI.


PORTABLEABIWORD.INI CONFIGURATION
=================================
The Portable AbiWord Launcher will look for an ini file called PortableAbiWord.ini within its directory.  If you are happy with the default options, it is not necessary, though.  The INI file is formatted as follows:

[PortableAbiWord]
AbiWordDirectory=abiword\AbiWord\bin
SettingsFile=settings\AbiWord.profile
AdditionalParameters=
WaitForAbiWord=false
AbiWordExecutable=AbiWord.exe

The AbiWordDirectory and SettingsFile entries should be set to the *relative* path to the directories containing abiword.exe, etc. from the current directory.  All must be a subdirectory (or multiple subdirectories) of the directory containing PortableAbiWord.exe.  The default entries for these are described in the installation section above.

The AdditionalParameters entry allows you to pass additional commandline parameter entries to abiword.exe.  Whatever you enter here will be appended to the call to abiword.exe.

The WaitForAbiWord entry allows you to set the Portable AbiWord Launcher to wait for AbiWord to close before it closes.  This option is mainly of use when PortableAbiWord.exe is called by another program that awaits it's conclusion to perform a task.

The AbiWordExecutable entry allows you to set the Portable AbiWord Launcher to use an alternate EXE call to launch AbiWord.  This is helpful if you are using a machine that is set to deny abiword.exe from running.  You'll need to rename the abiword.exe file and then enter the name you gave it on the abiwordexecutable= line of the INI.


PROGRAM HISTORY / ABOUT THE AUTHORS
===================================
This launcher contains elements from multiple sources.  It began as a batch file launcher written by myself (John T. Haller) and posted to the mozillaZine.org thread about running Firefox from a USB key.  tracon later released a launcher called fflaunch which I enhanced and re-released as Portable Firefox.  mai9 later improved on fflaunch's techniques and released it as Free The Fox.  Multiple suggestions back and forth as well as improvements from mai9, myself and others lead to the launcher we have today.  This most recent version adds some of my methods for allowing the code to be run from anywhere on first launch (as opposed to a specific directory), pass in commandline options, run without an ini file.