 The Online Application Guide is a round-the-clock general support service for the Robinson Curriculum software application. Here, you can find help with installing the software, using the interface and viewing and printing the curriculum's CD-ROM books.
There is also an on-line trouble-shooting section which provides technical solutions to a variety of appilcation-related problems. If you have questions other than those concerning the function of the curriculum software, please consult the information sheets that came packaged with the software and the Course of Study documents.
The Windows version requires:
To install the main curriculum program on your computer, it is best to run the appropriate download available from our Technical Support page. This is where the latet version of the RC software is made available. If you do not have access to our website you should run the setup program CD Disk 1. It should start automatically from the AutoMenu. If it does not, then in order to run the setup program: 1. Insert CD Disk #1 into your CD drive. 2. Choose Start then Run 3. In the Open box, type d:\setup (where d is your CD Drive letter), and press Enter. 4. Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. 5. If the default drive chosen for installation has insufficient space, change this to another drive during installation. (The program requires 6MB of space and Windows needs about 20 MB free for working space). 6. The main program is then started by clicking on the Robinson Curiculum icon on your desktop or by Choosing Start, then Programs, then Robinson Curriculum, then Robinson Curriculum Version 2.2.
The three tabs at the bottom control whether you are in Choose, View, or Print mode. When you first open the application you are show the "Choose" document screen with six tabs along the top and three at the bottom. The six tabs at the top allow you to choose from among the documents available.
Choose from the list of documents by double clicking on the document line or by single clicking and choosing "View". Note: Be sure to read all of the "Course of Study" documents before attempting to use this Curriculum. Insert CD Disk 1 into your CD ROM Drive. CD Drive for setting the CD Drive (it should work automatically but you can set it manually here as well.) Pressing the About gives you Version and Copyright information. Print List lets you preview then print out any of the lists of materials you are viewing. Choose the print button (see below) in the previewer to print the list.
Exit will exit from the program. The Advanced button Log shows you a Print Log of all previous print jobs. Clicking on any document will also show you the last date and pages you printed from that document in red on the Status Line at the bottom.
Help!
Extensive help is built into the program and made available through the "status line" at the bottom of the screen. Also available are the "About" box for version information and "Instructions" buttons on the vocabulary screens. Viewing Documents and Books On the left of the screen is a scrollable list of all available pages in the selected document. The size of the elevator slide control is proportional to the size of the page list. The content area shows the page itself. View panel gives choices for different viewing situations.
Clicking on the image allows you to move it around as well as to zoom in and out with the left and right mouse buttons as well as with the mouse scroll wheel. Finder lets you type in a page number (or index word for the Encyclopaedia or Dictionary) and then press Enter to immediately goto that page. Page Views allow for Full Page, Full Width, Two Column, or Three Column views. The latter two are for use with books that are printed in 2 or 3 columns. Doc Nav is a simple way to navigate to the prior and next pages in a document. Alt-1 - Prior Page Alt-2 - Next Page Page Navigation allows for navigation within the page itself. You can move to the upper left or right of a page when in Two or Three column view or rotate the page when in Full Page or Full Width views. Alt-3 - Go to Upper Left or Rotate Left Alt-4 - Move down the page Alt-5 - Go to Upper Right or Rotate Right Alt-6 - Move up the page or Rotate Straight Quality... is an advanced control that allows changes to the way the image is displayed. The default is Mitchell for best quality.
Maximize
If you have a desire to see as much of a page as possible, click the Maximize button at the bottom right of the screen. Press it again (Normal) to bring it back to normal. The Maximize button increases content space while still allowing access to essential navigation aids. You can also click the full screen button at the top right side of the window to make it fill the whole screen. Reclick to return to normal view and navigation aids.
First you should print and read the Course of Study documents. They will explain the unique aspects of a Self-Teaching home-school and how to organize it. If you do not read the Course of Study, you may lose much of the value of the Robinson Self-Teaching Home-School Curriculum.
When you have chosen a document and are ready to print it, click on the Print tab. Select - Pressing the select button gives you a convenient way to select the pages you wish to print.
Even Pgs, or Odd Pgs - Use this option for two sided printing. You can print on one side at a time with an ordinary printer and on both sides with a duplex printer. You would first print the odd pages then the even pages on the other side of the sheets. On an ordinary printer this type of printing is suseptible to errors from page misfeeds. A simpler type of two sided printing is to print half the book on one side of the paper and feed it through again to print the other half of the book on the other side of the paper. When the book is read it is read on the right side only. When you come to the last page you flip the binder around and page through, again reading only the right side. Print brings up the Windows Printer Dialog where you can make printer choices unique to your printer as well as set the pages to be printed. The default is to print the current page. If the printer designated at the top of the dialog box is not the printer you want to use, click on Setup and change it. Note: Because you are printing very high resolution digital images of original pages, the printing process may be slower than for other programs you use, especially if you have an older printer. This is normal. For tips on optimizing your printing speed and overcoming printer related problems, see the next section on Possible Problems and Their Remedies. Print % allows you to print at any size larger or smaller than the original. This is especially useful for smaller sized books. For instance, the Rover Boys books print well at 150%. The books are preset to print at 6.5" X 9" on letter sized paper. Fit to Page is the other choice here. It works with the Margins button to simply fit every page within the bounds of the margins you set.
R Check this box to print out pages in Reverse order. This is useful if your printer does not order the sheets correctly. Skip D Check this box to skip grayscale photographs and dark picture pages marked with a "D" (to save time and ink). See the Set Mode option on the View tab for more about this feature. Dark sets that page as a "Dark Picture Page" indicated by a "D" following the page number. These pages can then be skipped when printing (see Skip D button) to save on ink and toner. Batch lets you set the number of pages that will be sent to the printer in a batch. This keeps the printer subsystem fro mbeing overwhelmed with too large an amount of data to deal with at one time. 20 is a good default for this setting.
Printing with a Pentium computer and an HP 4 Plus printer proceeds at a full 12 pages per minute. With the very slowest computers and printers, this rate can be reduced to as little as 6 pages per hour. Just let your computer print at whatever speeds its capabilities allow. We used to purchase paper already punched for 3-hole notebook and 3-hole binders at our local Price-Costco or Sams discount store. The 3-hole paper costs about $30-$35 per 5,000 sheets and the 3-hole binders cost about $1 each in bulk. Now we buy the regular paper and the older children 3 hole punch it with a heavy duty (fixed hole - not sliding) punch. It does about 25-40 pages at a time. Since you will want to print many pages, it would be advisable to have a new model, good-quality, low-operating-cost laser printer. See the Printer Recommendations for more suggestions on printers and Inexpensive Bulk Ink Supply if you plan to use an ink jet printer.
A unsupported use of the Robinson Curriculum may be very convenient if you have enough free hard drive space. Method A - Using the Start I Run command line.Create a folder called books in your Robinson folder so it look slike c:\robinson\books. Windows Explorer is the ideal program to use for this. A Start I Run command that would do this would be: md c:\robinson\books Then simply copy all the CDs to that c:\robinson\books. A Start I Run command that would do this if your CD drive letter were d:\ would be: xcopy d:\*.* c:\robinson\books The effect of this is that you no longer have to put any CDs in the machine in order to access all the books and other materials. It also means less wear and tear on the CDs which can be put away in a safe place. Method B - Using the Mouse to Drag and Drop.Some steps to follow: 1. Click on Start I My Computer. 2. Then click on your CD drive (under Removable Storage). We will call this the CD Drive Window. Move this window to the right and size it to take up the right half of your screen. 3. Double click on the My Computer icon again. We will call this the My Computer Window. Move this window to the left and size it to take up the left half of your screen. 4. Locate the c:\robinson folder under My Computer - C: drive and click on it. Then right click (click on the right mouse button) anywhere on the right pane of the window and choose New Folder from the menu. Name it books. Then double click on this folder. 5. Go back to the CD Drive Window and click on the first folder in it and press Ctrl-A to highlight all the folders. 6. Drag and drop the folders onto c:\robinson\books folder in the My Computer Window (one with enough space [at least 650 MB] to hold the contents of the CD). It will from 5-15 minutes depending on your computer's speed. 7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for all the CDs you wish to transfer.
Difficulty in reading the CDsIf this happens while using the CDs and it affects some books and not others... The disks of the Curriculum are full. Therefore they exercise the CD Drive to its fullest extent. Some low quality CD Drives have difficulty reading the outer tracks of full CD ROMs. The directories are on the outside tracks and may be unreadable by these drives. Solution: try a different CD Drive.
Cannot See All Curriculum Control ButtonsThis occurs on large graphic screens and screens with a Large Fonts setting. It may be corrected by either reducing the size of the font or using the double arrows to pull down the bottom margin thereby increasing the screen size.
Program gives Error Messages on Some Pages, especially Grayscale and Color.This may be fixed by updating your video driver. If an update is not available, it usually may be fixed by using a Quality Mode less than 10. Note: PostScript Printer drivers may fail to print properly or may be extremely slow.
Additional Suggestions
Be sure you have enough free space on your C DriveMake sure you install on a drive with at least 6 to 8 MB available disk space.
Narrowing down the problemYou can try to install the program on another computer. If it works fine there then chances are there is no problem with the CDs but a misconfiguration or faulty hardware on the original computer.
Use another printer driverIs there another driver that can be used to print to this printer, or is there another emulation that can be used? If so, try these options and see if the printer driver is the problem. Check the version of the driver through Control Panel and ensure you have the latest version.
General AdviceSome printers and print drivers are more prone to problems than other as manufacturers try to gain a competitive advantage by pushing the technology envelope. As a rule, the print drivers that ship on the Microsoft Windows CD are more reliable than those that come with the printer. Thus, if you are having problems, look in you printer manual for information on which other printers your printer is compatible with. Then install the print driver(s) for those printers (My Computer - Printers - Add Printer). Print drivers for earlier models may be simpler, more thoroughly tested, and thus more reliable. For many printers that are PCL (HP's Printer Control Language) compatible, the HP LaserJet Series II print driver is a solid choice for a fast, reliable print driver.
RebootA simple reboot (stopping and starting) is also an effective way to get around many computer problems.
Does the printer driver memory setting match the printer's capability?If the printer driver memory setting is set higher than the amount of memory actually available on the printer, you could encounter various printing problems such as dropped text, missing graphics, etc. Be sure that you set the memory for exactly the amount available on your printer. If you are unsure of the amount of memory on your printer, set the printer driver memory setting to the default.
Reinstall the Robinson CurriculumYou may reinstall the Curriculum application any time you wish.
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button will check for which CD is in the computer and show its label. 
can be turned on and off 
to reveal advanced controls.
