Visual Thought 1.4 Upgrade Notes
24 July 1998

Confluent, Inc.
400 Spear St., Suite 207
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-764-1000 tel * 415-764-1008 fax
info@confluent.com * http://www.confluent.com


Thanks!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Greetings, and thanks once again for being a Confluent customer.  You
are receiving this upgrade package if you purchased Visual Thought and
are on annual support.  This upgrade package contains one or more sets
of the following components:

 - Visual Thought 1.4 Upgrade Notes (this notice)
 - Visual Thought 1.4 Release Notes
 - Visual Thought 1.4 CD-ROM

These Upgrade Notes describe some information you must know when you
upgrade to 1.4, including information on installation and licensing.


How many CD-ROMs?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that you are only receiving one 1.4 CD-ROM for every five
Visual Thought licenses that you purchased.  The number of CD-ROMs
that you have does not affect your _usage_ of Visual Thought in any
way.  For example, if you had ten 1.4 CD-ROMs, you could perform your
installation from just one of the CD-ROMs and put the other nine on
your shelf.

If, however, you would like to obtain your full allocation of CD-ROMs,
please just call us at 415-764-1000 or 800-780-2838 or send e-mail to
info@confluent.com, and we'll ship out the requested CD-ROMs right
away.


Why Upgrade?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You might ask yourself why you should take the time to upgrade Visual
Thought to version 1.4.  We believe you will find that this release
offers many substantial improvements over version 1.3.

The enclosed 1.4 Release Notes contain brief descriptions of the
changes made between the 1.3 and 1.4 releases.  Just a few of the more
important changes are summarized below.  Please see the 1.4 Release
Notes for more information.

- Visual Thought has improved Windows integration.  For example:

  - You can now cut and copy graphics from Visual Thought on Windows
    95/NT and paste into popular programs such as PowerPoint and Word.

  - UNIX users can export WMF (Windows Metafile) format files and
    import them into Windows programs such as PowerPoint and Word.

  - Visual Thought documents may now be saved either as files (the
    default) or as directories and are autotyped on installation; this
    means that you can now double-click on documents to run them
    automatically.

- Visual Thought documents may now be saved either as files (the
  default) or as directories.  This user-settable preference makes it
  easier to manipulate documents in the file system.

- Visual Thought now supports an extensive set of user-settable
  preferences in the Preferences dialog, opened with the
  Options->Preferences... menu item.  Preferences may be configured in a
  single file for an entire site.  These system preferences may also be
  overridden for individual user's tastes.  More information may be
  found in the technical note note_preferences.txt.

- The set of documents read at startup may be extensively configured
  using the new "Personalities" feature.  An example is the "Accident"
  personality, which customizes the user interface for automobile
  accident scene diagramming.  More information may be found in the
  technical note note_personality.txt.


Installation on UNIX
----------------------------------------------------------------------
On UNIX, you should install version 1.4 in the same directories as
previous versions of Visual Thought.  For example, if you had
installed versions 1.0 through 1.3 in:

   /usr/local/confluent

and had set the executable directory to /usr/local/bin and the man
pages directory to /usr/local/man, you should specify the same
directories when you install 1.4.  We highly recommend that you
install in this way, because it simplifies life for you in the
following ways:

- Licensing is taken care of automatically, so that your previous
  license key files will work automatically for 1.4, without requiring
  you to re-install license keys.  In fact, any upgrade you receive from
  us named 1.x, on any platform, will work with your existing license
  key files.

- You will still have access to previous versions of Visual Thought,
  because the installation procedures rename the previous vthought links
  appropriately (e.g., to vthought-1.1, vthought-1.2, or vthought-1.3).
  Installation of 1.4 will not delete any part of your 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, or
  1.3 installation.

Before installation, you should shut down the old license server with
the following command:

   confluent_a kill

Version 1.4 for UNIX runs on SunOS, Solaris, and HP-UX.  Although it
is likely that you use the same executable directory (e.g.,
/usr/local/bin) for SunOS and Solaris, you probably use a physically
different executable directory for HP-UX.  In this case, first install
Visual Thought for SunOS and Solaris, choosing your executable
directory (e.g., /usr/local/bin).  Then install again for HP-UX only,
specifying a different executable directory.

For UNIX, it doesn't matter which machine you install from; you can
install Visual Thought for any UNIX platform from any other UNIX
platform.  However, you should install on a machine that has access to
the same physical executable and man pages directories as the machines
that will be used to run the installed version.

HP-UX does not support the RockRidge extensions for CD-ROM formats,
causing all file names to be uppercased with "8.3" names when the
Visual Thought CD-ROM is mounted from an HP workstation.  Therefore,
whereas the install command from a Sun machine is:

   ./install

the install command from an HP-UX machine is:

   ./INSTALL*

(including the "*").  In general, please follow the instructions in
the "Installation and Licensing Guide," provided with your CD-ROM, to
install 1.4.


Installation on Windows
----------------------------------------------------------------------
On Windows, if you have installed a floating license key and are using
the license server, you must shut down the old license server before
installation.  Open the Control Panel and run the ConfluentLM applet.
The applet displays a window with the title "Confluent License
Manager".  Click the Stop button if the window says the server is
running.


Licensing
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can use Visual Thought licenses transparently across all supported
platforms.  For example, if you've originally purchased 5 floating
licenses for SunOS, after installing 1.4, you will be able to have 5
concurrent users on any combination of SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, and
Windows machines using your same license key.  Confluent's policy is
always to make installation and licensing as easy as possible for you.
There are no "sidegrade" or "administration" fees.

To serve floating licenses for Visual Thought 1.4 across multiple
installations (UNIX, Windows, or any combination thereof), the
important points to remember are:

 1. Normally, you should have exactly one license server process to
    serve all installations in your network;

 2. The license directories of all installations must have identical
    copies of all license key files (e.g., 01.lic, 02.lic, etc.).  The
    license key files are installed in the license directory of the
    installation used by the license server.  They must be copied to the
    license directory of the other installations.

    On UNIX, the license key files have paths like the following:

       /usr/local/confluent/license/01.lic

    On Windows, the paths are like:

       C:\Program Files\Confluent\Visual Thought 1.4\license\01.lic


Licensing on UNIX
----------------------------------------------------------------------
On UNIX, if you install 1.4 into the same directories as previous
versions of Visual Thought, you will not have to re-install any
license keys.  Visual Thought 1.4 will run with existing 1.3 license
key files.

There was, however, a key format change between the 1.2 and 1.3
releases.  If you are upgrading from 1.2 to 1.4, please contact
Confluent for your new keys.

You should shut down the old license server before installation and
bring up the new license server after installation.  In other words,
you should follow this sequence:

   % confluent_a kill
   ... install version 1.4 ...
   % confluent_a start

The "confluent_a kill" command shuts down any old license server, and
the "confluent_a start" command starts the 1.4 license server,
assuming the directories in which you decided to place executables is
the same for both versions (e.g., /usr/local/bin).

This installation and license procedure is "safe" even if users are
running Visual Thought 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, or 1.3 when you install and
license Visual Thought 1.4 -- users will not lose any work from having
executables removed or from license failures, and the next time they
run Visual Thought, they will automatically run version 1.4.


Licensing on Windows
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Because Visual Thought 1.4 was designed to support UNIX and Windows,
you will be able to install 1.4 on your Windows 95 or NT systems and
obtain licenses from any floating license servers.  That is, floating
licenses can be served transparently across all platforms.

If you do use both UNIX and Windows versions of Visual Thought, we
highly recommend that you run the license server on a UNIX workstation
because of the greater robustness and reliability inherent in UNIX.

To serve licenses across all supported platforms, you must run 1.3 or
1.4 on all platforms.  UNIX 1.2 installations cannot serve licenses
for Windows 1.3/1.4 installations; you must upgrade the UNIX
installations to 1.3 or 1.4.

If you have installed a floating license key and are using the license
server on Windows, you must start the new license server after copying
the license key files.  Open the Control Panel and run the ConfluentLM
applet.  The applet displays a window with the title "Confluent
License Manager".  Click the Launch button if the window says the
server is stopped.
