Category : Display Utilities
Archive   : NOYB.ZIP
Filename : NOYB.DOC

I wrote NOYB ('None Of Your Business') specically to allow myself

a quick and convinent method for clearing a screen. Two situations

continue to arise:

1). I have confidential information displayed on the screen when

someone not privy to that information enters my office.

2). I am in the midst of an application when I must suddenly leave

the office for a short period of time. This situation was the

real reason I wrote the utility.


NOYB is a resident utility which replaces the current keyboard

interrupt routine. If the and NOYB's toggle key are pressed,

NOYB will save the caller's video environment, clear the screen and turn

off the cursor. In this version of NOYB, the toggle key is the letter

'Z' key. If you own a macro assembler, you can (and should) change the

the toggle key to something different. NOYB 'blanks' the screen in a

safe manner. It simply writes all spaces to the screen using the

standard attributes of background = black, and foreground = white. No

tricks with the video signal are used. The screen is written directly

to video memory (for the purpose of speed) and makes no attempt to pre-

vent the 'snow effect' on CGA cards in text modes. The idea was to

clear the screen quickly, not cosmetically. The purpose of turning off

the cursor was to give the PC the appearance of not being turned on, to

anyone looking into my office from the hall.


NOYB, when toggled, will only operate in 80 column text modes. NOYB

checks the video mode each time it is toggled. If the caller is not in

a text mode, when NOYB is requested, the request is ignored. NOYB also

checks for recursion (i.e. if NOYB is currently active, pressing

and the toggle key again will produce an ignored request).



NOYB, when active, will ingore any keyboard requests other than

the toggle key pressed by itself. This was done to protect the callers

current application from receiving any stray input. When the toggle key

is pressed by itself, NOYB will restore the callers original video environ

ment, and return the caller to exactly where he was prior to toggling NOYB

active.


I have yet to find an application (which works in text mode) that

NOYB acts badly with, however that doesn't mean one dosen't exist. It

works for blanking the screen when SideKick is loaded and/or currently

displaying one of it's windows, especially the NotePad window, which would

probably be the most likely of SideKick's windows to contain confidential

information.


As stated before, I needed a utility to perform NOYB's function,

(without giving up the amount of memory SuperKey would use), and it

works fine for me and others that I have given a copy to. So, if you

also find NOYB useful, feel free to use it and/or give copies of it away.