Portable VLC Launcher 1.1.4.2
=============================
Copyright (C) 2004-2006 John T. Haller

Website: http://portableapps.com/portablevlc

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 VLC
==================
The Portable VLC Launcher allows you to run VLC from a removable drive whose letter changes as you move it to another computer.  It allows you to split the program directory from your profiles directory without hand editing any files.  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 PortableVLC.nsi.


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

-\ <--- Directory with PortableVLC.exe
  +\App\
    +\vlc\
  +\Data\
    +\settings\

OR

-\ <--- Directory with PortableVLC.exe
  +\PortableVLC\
    +\App\
      +\vlc\
    +\Data\
      +\settings\

OR

-\ <--- Directory with PortableVLC.exe
  +\PortableApps\
    +\PortableVLC\
      +\App\
        +\vlc\
      +\Data\
        +\settings\

OR

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

It can be used in other directory configurations by including the PortableVLC.ini file in the same directory as PortableVLC.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 PortableVLC.exe called PortableVLC or 2 directories deep in PortableApps\PortableVLC or Data\PortableVLC.  All paths in the INI should remain relative to the EXE and not the INI.


PORTABLEVLC.INI CONFIGURATION
=============================
The Portable VLC Launcher will look for an ini file called PortableVLC.ini.  If you are happy with the default options, it is not necessary, though.  The INI file is formatted as follows:

[PortableVLC]
MirandaDirectory=App\vlc
SettingsDirectory=Data\settings
AdditionalParameters=
WaitForVLC=false
VLCExecutable=vlc.exe
DisableSplashScreen=false

The VLCDirectory and SettingsDirectory entries should be set to the *relative* path to the appropriate directories from the current directory.  All must be a subdirectory (or multiple subdirectories) of the directory containing PortableVLC.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 vlc.exe.  Whatever you enter here will be appended to the call to vlc.exe.

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

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

The DisableSplashScreen entry allows you to run the Portable VLC Launcher without the splash screen showing up.  The default is false.


PROGRAM HISTORY / ABOUT THE AUTHORS
===================================
This launcher contains ideas 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.