--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Bid Euchre 0.72
| Copyright (C) 2005 John Ratliff
| http://bideuchre.sourceforge.net/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 1.0 Introduction
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Welcome to Bid Euchre. Bid Euchre is a variation on traditional Euchre played
  mainly in the midwestern United States. This particular variant is played in
  Bloomington, Indiana, USA. You can read the rules of our version in
  rules.html.
  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 2.0 Playing Bid Euchre
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Bid Euchre has two modes, text and graphical. Graphical is the default and
  preferred mode, but if you are on a text console, you can use the text
  version. Or maybe you just want to see what it's like.
  
  The graphical version has two advantages over the text version (besides the
  fact it has graphics). First, you cannot signal your teammates in text mode.
  Second, the graphical mode has a cheat mode whereby you can see all the
  players cards. This is really more for debugging purposes, but it's an
  advantage to be sure.
  
  To use the text mode, start the program with ./bideuchre --text. For graphical
  mode, just use ./bideuchre or double-click the icon. The interface is fairly
  intuitive, but the graphical interface is described in more detail in
  bideuchre.html. You can view this from inside the program from the Help menu.
  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 3.0 Building from Source
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  I have provided binaries for Windows, x86 Linux (GTK+ 1.2 and 2.0), and
  PPC Mac OS-X. You may wish to try one of these binary versions rather than
  compile the source yourself.

  Bid Euchre is an open source program, which means you can compile it for your
  platform if you like.
  
  Bid Euchre uses wxWidgets to achieve cross-platform capability. This means it
  should run on Windows, Mac OS-X, and any platform that uses the GTK toolkit
  (Linux and Solaris, just to name a couple).
  
  If you want to build from source, you will need wxWidgets >= 2.6.1. You can
  get this from http://www.wxwidgets.org/.
  
  After you have the wxWidgets library installed, you can compile Bid Euchre. It
  is a standard GNU configure system.
  
  ./configure && make
  
  Don't use make install as it won't install the images. The images must be
  in a subdirectory below the executable. I hope to have a better installation
  solution for Unix soon.
  
  If you're building on Windows, I suggest MinGW with msys.
  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 4.0 Revision History
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Version 0.72 - August 9, 2005
    - fixed Windows installer to include necessary DLLs
    - fixed the homepage URL
    - AI Player now takes trick with lowest trump if last player
  
  Version 0.71 - August 6, 2005
    - removed useless calls to Update()
    - added Mac OS-X binaries
  
  Version 0.70 - August 2, 2005
    - initial public release
  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 5.0 Contact Information
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The author, John Ratliff, can be contacted via email at
  webmaster (AT) technoplaza.net (replace the (AT) with the @ sign). You can
  also use my online feedback form at http://www.technoplaza.net/feedback.php
  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 6.0 License Information
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Bid Euchre is licensed under the GNU GPL. It is free software under that
  license. You can read the full text of the license in the docs directory in
  the file license.txt. Learn more at http://www.gnu.org/.