A "How To" Guide for the WCT Reader

How Do I Install From the DVD?

It's the old drag-and-drop method!
Setting up to drag-and-drop ebooks from the DVD onto a hard drive:

In brief, the trick is to have two copies of "My Computer" (Windows XP) or "Computer" (Windows Vista) open at the same time. One is used to navigate about on the DVD, the other to set locations into which ebooks are to be copied.

The illustrations that follow are based on Windows XP. Apart from frequent nagging for confirmations ("Do you really want to ...?" "Well, are you really really sure you want to ...?"), Vista behaves in essentially the same way. Differences are cosmetic only; the method is the same.

Presumably you have already set up My Computer according to your preferences. For example, if you find truncated headings and great numbers of icons confusing as in Screen 1 ...
..., you may wish to right click in the display area and select "View -- Details" (Screen 2)

which yields the easier-to-read Screen 3:
Another trick: If you wish to switch between Screen 3 above and Screen 4 ...
then click on "Folders", the fifth large icon in the row near the top.

You may have noticed that some versions of the Words Close Together 14,000 Searchable Ebooks DVD used PG_WCTs as its main directory. That was an acronym for "Project Gutenberg Words Close Together Files". Recent versions use the simpler "Ebooks" as the main directory. We suggest that you use the "Ebooks" directory name on your hard drive.
Where shall I drag the ebooks to?
That depends on how many books you plan to have on your hard disk. If none, you can actually use the ebooks directly from the DVD; it takes a couple of seconds longer to open an ebook that way. If a few ebooks only are desired on your hard disk, you will find it convenient to drag and drop the ones you want together into one place.
How shall I arrange the books?
Decide how many ebooks you wish to copy and where you wish to put them. If you plan to have only a few ebooks on your hard drive, you might put them all together in one place. If you are copying all or many of them, you may prefer to follow the arrangement on the DVD -- a top directory, a sub-directory for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, and under those, sub-directories for each author whose last name begins with that letter.
Getting ready:
Open a copy of "My Computer" (Vista "Computer"). Navigate to where you wish to place the ebooks on your hard drive.

Open a second copy of "My Computer". Navigate to your DVD drive.
How do I copy all 14,000 ebooks?
Check that you can spare 2.6 gigabytes of space on your hard drive. Then highlight the main directory on the DVD (named either PG_WCTs or Ebooks). Left click on the directory, drag down to the target drive, then release the left button. Check that a directory of the same name appears on the hard disk and an hour glass or other image suggesting passage of time appears. PLEASE NOTE: Loading 14,000 books and allocating them among over 4000 author subdirectories may easily take your computer 30 to 60 minutes. Go have lunch or do something else useful. (Editor's paranoid note: Your computer knows when you are watching it, and will deliberately take more time.)

See the two "My Computer" images in Screen 5:

How do I copy a few ebooks?
If necessary, create a directory on the target drive using menu selection "File -- New -- Folder".

Navigate to the author of ebooks that you want. Select at least one ebook. To select multiple titles under one author, you can use CTRL-A for all. To select a few titles in a row, highlight an ebook at either end of the group, hold down the shift key, and highlight the ebook at the other end of the list. To select a few scattered titles, hold down the CTRL key and highlight one book after another. See the two "My Computer" images in Screen 6 below. Drag from anywhere among the selected titles onto the "My Computer" display of your hard disk. This is usually quite quick. Repeat for other authors as desired.

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