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Introduction 1 MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 John L. Jones All Rights Reserved. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Written By, John L. Jones Special thanks goes to: Ron Sudweeks Who spent much time going over this tutorial. And then spending more time with me, helping me to correct the many errors he had found. Ron also deserves credit for many suggesting that lead to many improvements to the program itself. Roger Nedel Who had all the qualities needed to test this tutorial. He was totally new to MegaD and he had an Amiga Computer. Little did I know how great the bargain was that I had gotten. A few days later I received a 27 page document which included many needed corrections, suggestions and additions. Along with this information he included journal entries that helped me to see where the tutorial had failed in teaching the functions of MegaD to a new user. I claim all responsibility for any errors left within this document. The above mentioned people deserve credit for the many refinements they made upon this document. John L. Jones MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 2 Introduction ============== MegaD, is without question, a unique directory utility. It does not play by the old rules set by the gambit of directory utilities. The standard directory utility allows only one source directory and one destination directory and usually places the two available directories in list side by side. MegaD can emulate this type of mode if you need it but this limited mode of left and right Directory Windows restricts many of the unique features of MegaD. Features such as the ability to copy files from more than one source directory, The ability to copy source files to multiple destinations. The ability to copy from multiple source to multiple destinations. The same flexibility is given to all of the commands within MegaD. Commands such as Copy As, Duplicate, Move, Move as, Rename, Delete, Comments, Set Protect.... This concept of not being restricted to just one or two windows is used throughout MegaD. You are allowed multiple text windows open at one time. The only thing that will limit you with MegaD is your available system memory. Due to the uniqueness of MegaD it was decided that to give you, the user, a better understanding of it features, a tutorial would be beneficial. Thus this text was written. You may want to jump right into MegaD after looking over the MegaD.Doc file. Or you may want too take the step by step approach that this file offers. I will show how to use the built in functions of MegaD, how to add new function to MegaD, and how to teach and train MegaD to do new tricks, MegaD has the ability to be trained to use any external program. I will be starting from the very basic commands that require only one file to be selected. I will move on from there to show you how functions MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 3 such as copy and move work that require both a source and a destination directory. With copy and move we will also show you how to copy from one or more source directories to a multiple of destination directories. You will be shown how to filter the information in the Directory Window so that you will be able to reduce large directory listings to a manageable size by using different file attributes. We will then move on to showing you how to train MegaD to launch your favorite utilities During this tutorial I am going to assume that you are using MegaD in the same state that it was in the first time you ran it. In other words it will be using it's own built in defaults. There are so many ways that MegaD can be configured that it would be confusing to describe it all within this text. I learned how to use MegaD as I wrote it. In it's current state I have found it to be so versatile that there is little that it will not do. I hope that with a little ground work, you will be able to maneuver and perform any function that you wish. I will only attempt to give you the very basics. With this and a little imagination you should be able do more with it each time you run MegaD. MegaD is one of those programs that is made for the user to mold to his likes. This is brief outline of how this tutorial is laid out. MegaD Windows This section is about the different windows used within MegaD. This section is not really a tutorial but a necessary discussion of how the windows used within MegaD work and the main functions of those windows. Simple Commands And MegaD We will start with the simple commands that require one open Directory Window to perform a task. Source and Destination MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 4 Commands We will move on to commands that require more than one Directory Window open to the screen at one time. Commands such as 'Copy' and 'Move' require source and destination directories. Filters and Pattern Matching This section describes the unique and powerful 'Filters', 'Sel/Clr Pattern' (Select/Clear Patterns) and 'Find' functions of MegaD. All three use a powerful requestor that allows you to use 1 to 5 filters at one time. AutoBoots This is the where you take MegaD to school and teach it new tricks. You will be able to train MegaD to recognize any data file and match it to a program file that can handle the data file. Program Control Window This is a detour that we will have to take in order to fully understand how to create an 'AutoBoot'. We will also use what we learn in this section with 'User Gadgets' and 'Menu Sets'. Back To Adding AutoBoots After the above described detour we will finish off the discussion on AutoBoots. User Gadgets We will learn how to add new commands to the existing commands found on the 'Keypad Command Gadgets' of the 'Control Window'. Menu Sets Here, we will add a new 'Menu Set' that we will be able to access within the MegaD 'Utility' menu. Export File MegaD will create files suitable to create a database of programs and files. This export file works with other existing database programs. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 5 MegaD Preferences MegaD has many user definable preferences settings. The Preferences are broken into the following groups: Colors Displays Area 1 of Defaults Area 2 of Defaults Keypads We will discuss each of the preference areas in detail. MegaD Menus MegaD allows extensive control over the Directory Windows it uses and the displays within them. Much of the control is access through the menus found within MegaD. You will find the step by step approach of this file helpful in your quest to learn MegaD. MegaD, without question, is the most versatile, capable and flexible directory utility to date. This tutorial will help you to understand and harness the power of MegaD. Getting Started MegaD can be started from the CLI (Command Line Interface) or from the Workbench. To run MegaD from the CLI CD to the directory that the program file MegaD is in and type "Run MegaD" To start MegaD from the Workbench double click the MegaD icon. You should be greeted with this window containing about 30 different gadgets and one scrolling list at the top. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 6 ----------------------------------------------------------------- |MegaD 2.0 Control Window | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | Free Volumes |() Volumes In Memory | | |------------------------------------------------------------| | | First Buffered Volume DF0: 648,324 | |--1 | Second Buffered Volume DF1: 232,987 |/\| | Third Buffered Volume WORK: 22,343,548 |\/| |---------------------------------------------------------------| |**| Device Gadget 1 | Device Gadget 4 | Device Gadget 7 | |**|-------------------+---------------------+------------------| | | Device Gadget 2 | Device Gadget 5 | Device Gadget 8 | | |-------------------+---------------------+------------------|--2 | | Device Gadget 3 | Device Gadget 6 | Device Gadget 9 | | |-------------------+----------------------------------------| | | Device Name: | | | |------------------------------------------------------------| |**| Files Selected Chip | |**| Dir. Selected Fast | | | Bytes Selected Large |--3 |**| Free Disk space Total | |**| Active Directory | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | Keypad '(' | Keypad ')' | Keypad '/' | Keypad '*' | | |--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------| C | | Keypad '7' | Keypad '8' | Keypad '9' | Keypad '-' | - | |--------------+--------------+--------------|--------------| | | Keypad '4' | Keypad '5' | Keypad '6' | Keypad '+' | S |--4 |--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------| - | | Keypad '1' | Keypad '2' | Keypad '3' | | | |-----------------------------+--------------| ENTER | A | | Keypad '0' | Keypad '.' | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Main Control Window Above is an character representation of what the Main Control Window looks like. The titles of the gadgets have been changed to generic names. The actual window that should be up on your system will contain device names and command titles in the gadgets. The Control Window is your link to all of the functions that MegaD possesses. Lets break the parts of the window down into it's four basic components. The number to the right of the representation corresponds with the below list. 1. Volumes in memory, and Device, Assign and Drives list 2. Device Gadgets 3. Information area 4. Command Gadget MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 7 |---------------------------------------------------------------| | Free Volumes |() Volumes In Memory | | |------------------------------------------------------------| | | First Buffered Volume DF0: 648,324 | |--1 | Second Buffered Volume DF1: 232,987 |/\| | Third Buffered Volume WORK: 22,343,548 |\/| |---------------------------------------------------------------| MegaD List Area Above is a cutout of section 1. The Volumes in memory, and Device, Assign and Drives list. Two kinds of list are available in this area. The lists can be cycled in and out of the list area by the use of the cycle gadget at the top of the window. 'Volumes In Memory' 'Volumes In Memory' list. This is a list of buffered directories that have been loaded, if any. It may be an empty list at the moment. This is what the cutout represent now Device List 'Devices, Assigns and Drives' list. This list is never empty. It shows available volumes and system assigns such as 'Fonts:' The way to chose which list to use is controlled by the cycle gadgets at the top center to right side of the window. It has a small arrow going in a circle at the left side of the gadget. By selecting this gadget the list will change to the one not being displayed. Free Volumes Gadget On the left side of that gadget is one that is titled 'Free Volumes'. MegaD buffers all of the directories that have been loaded. This makes for quick access to those directories. It is also memory consuming. By selecting this gadget once, you can free up memory used by buffered directories. The 'Free Volumes' gadget will be ghosted if there are no buffered volumes in memory. Once any volume or directory is loaded the gadget will be activated allowing you to select it. When a directory is buffered, the contents of the directory are in the computer's main memory. If you close that volume and then MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 8 access it later, MegaD doesn't have to access the disk because the contents are still in the computer's memory (in the buffer). This not only saves in access time, but saves wear on the disk. By selecting the "Free Volumes" gadget, you remove the contents of that volume(s) from the computer's memory, and any future attempts to access that volume will result in having to read from disk. To the far right of the upper area of the window is a proportional gadget and two step gadgets for scrolling the list in this window. They work to move the list up or down if the list can be scrolled. If the list can be scrolled the proportional gadget will show where in the list you are at that moment and it will let you move to a new position by selecting and moving the scroller up and down. The arrow gadgets will scroll the list by single steps and will repeat the steps as long as the gadget is selected. Buffered Volume List The items in the list at the top of the Control Window display information about where the volume was loaded from. If the volume was loaded from the drive DF0: it will display DF0: in the center of the line. To the right of the line the free disk space for that volume is shown. The items in the lists can be selected for special tasks. Double clicking the item will load the directory and place it in a window. Single selecting the item will select it or unselect the item for a task. Some of the special tasks are. Loading selected items from the Device List Loading a group of volumes by selecting them and then using the menu command 'Windows, Open Windows, Selected Directories' or closing them with the 'Windows, Close Windows, Selected Directories'. This is the only function that is available that works with items selected in the Device list. This is not the only way to open a volume. You will see later that there are shortcuts to this method. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 9 (The below functions only works on the Volumes in Memory list.) Freeing Buffered Volumes Freeing a specified volume from the buffered directories. By selecting items in the 'volumes In Memory' list and then selecting 'Free Volumes' just that volume will be removed from the buffer freeing the memory used by it. If you should select the 'Free Volumes' gadget without any items selected in this list, all buffered volumes will be freed. Select Volumes for making a listing MegaD allows you to print the contents of a volume (all the directories and files in that volume, including all subdirectories). Not only can you send the volume's contents to the printer, but MegaD allows you to save the contents to a disk file, should you desire. You can send the volumes contents to the printer by selecting the desired volume in the volume window (directly below the 'Free Volumes' gadget) and then selecting the 'Output Prt' Command Gadget. You can send the volumes contents to a disk file by opening a Directory Window to the directory you wish the file to be written, and selecting the 'Output File' Command Gadget. Selecting a volume to relabel the volume with the Relabel keypad command. The above mentioned commands will be discussed in detail later on in the tutorial. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 10 |---------------------------------------------------------------| |**| Device Gadget 1 | Device Gadget 4 | Device Gadget 7 | |**|-------------------+---------------------+------------------| | | Device Gadget 2 | Device Gadget 5 | Device Gadget 8 | | |-------------------+---------------------+------------------|--2 | | Device Gadget 3 | Device Gadget 6 | Device Gadget 9 | | |-------------------+----------------------------------------| | | Device Name: | | | |------------------------------------------------------------| Device Gadgets The second area in the Control Window contains nine booleen gadgets and one string gadget. All ten gadgets serve the same purpose, to load a volume or directory. They can be switch to do another task but we will get in to that later. At first run the device gadgets are set to the first nine volumes and assigns found in the 'Device, Assigns and Drives' list. This may not be the way you want them and if so it can be changed by using the menu option 'Project, Set Preferences.' The lower nine string gadgets in the window that opens from that option are used to set the device gadgets. Once back to the Control Window select any of the nine gadgets to load a volume or directory. After doing so, and if no errors were encountered, a window should open with the list of items found in that directory. Device String Gadget Directly below the 9 device gadgets is a string gadget (labelled 'Device Name:'). This gadget is used to type any valid directory name that you want to load. Typing a name and pressing return is the equivalent of hitting one of the upper nine device gadgets. Any string gadget, in any MegaD window, can be activated by pressing the space bar once. The window must be the active window at the time for this to work. This feature includes the Main Control Window Device String Gadget. Device Gadgets keyboard MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 11 Equivalent The upper numeric keys on the keyboard 1 - 9 (not the keypad) will do the equivalent of the hitting one of the nine device gadgets. The keys equate to the number found in the above cutout of the window. | |------------------------------------------------------------| |**| Files Selected Chip | |**| Dir. Selected Fast | | | Bytes Selected Large |--3 |**| Free Disk space Total | |**| Active Directory | ---------------------------------------------------------------| Information Area The third area of the main window is for information. On the left side it shows how many files and directories are selected and it shows how many bytes are selected. This can be used to judge if the destination disk has enough room to write the files and directories to it. If unbuffered directories are selected, the size of the directory is unknown and can not be calculated. If you want to be sure of the actual byte count of information in a directory, use the 'Go Deep' command on those directories first. The 'Go Deep' Command Gadget is found in the second bank of Keypad Command Gadgets. This will buffer the directories and MegaD will be able to tell you just how much space will be needed for the copy or move. This area has a gadget hidden beneath the information, the gadget is quite easy to hit and you may want to try it now to see how it works. Place the mouse pointer directly over the MegaD main menu information window (directly below the string gadget labelled 'Device Name') and single-click. Notice that when you clicked, the information changed from 'all items selected' to 'source items selected By selecting that gadget the information will toggle from all items selected to source items selected. If deleting files, and you wish to know exactly how many file and directory will be deleted, you should use the Selected information mode. If copying or moving files, and you wish to know exactly how many files and directory will be copied or moved, you should use the Source information mode. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 12 Available Memory On the right side it shows the system memory four different ways. Available chip and fast memory. The largest chunk of memory still available and then a total of the free Chip and Fast memory. Active Directory At the bottom of the information window you will see the text: 'Free Disk Space' and 'Active Directory'. These two items will display the amount of disk space which is free on the currently active directory. If no directory is currently active, then both items are blank. Additionally, the directory specified by this 'Active Directory' item is known as the 'destination' directory. What do I mean by that? Well any command which requires a destination will act on that directory. For instance, if you want to move a file somewhere, it will be moved from some (origin) directory into that (destination) directory. MegaD can use more than one destination directory at a time; however, it can display only one of the destination directories in this area at a time. We will talk more about the multiple destinations later. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 13 |---------------------------------------------------------------| | Keypad '(' | Keypad ')' | Keypad '/' | Keypad '*' | | |--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------| C | | Keypad '7' | Keypad '8' | Keypad '9' | Keypad '-' | - | |--------------+--------------+--------------|--------------| | | Keypad '4' | Keypad '5' | Keypad '6' | Keypad '+' | S |--4 |--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------| - | | Keypad '1' | Keypad '2' | Keypad '3' | | | |-----------------------------+--------------| ENTER | A | | Keypad '0' | Keypad '.' | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Keypad Gadgets The fourth and bottom area of the Control Window is where you access the commands that MegaD can perform on windows, directories and files. This area is actually four sets or banks of gadgets that can be access though the use of the three 'Shift Gadgets' mounted to the right of the gadgets. The 'Shift Gadgets' coincide with the Ctrl, Shift and Alt keys on your keyboard. C = Ctrl (Control) S = Shift A = Alt (Alternate) Quick Command Access The main group of gadgets is arranged in the same order as the keypad on the side of most amiga keyboards. Each keypad gadget can be accessed from the keyboard by pressing the equivalent key. You will soon find that you can reach any command quickly and easily with the keyboard. Keypad Banks There are four banks of keypad gadgets. The banks are access by use of ether the 'Shift Gadgets' at the side of the Keypad gadgets or by pressing the corresponding shift key, as listed above. Through the tutorial I will be referring to the sets of keypad gadgets by banks. First bank: is access when there are no shift keys pressed on the keyboard and none of the 'Shift Gadgets' are pressed. Second bank: is access when the Ctrl keyboard key is press or the 'C' 'Shift gadget' is selected. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 14 Third bank: is access when the Shift keyboard key is press or the 'S' 'Shift gadget' is selected. Fourth bank: is access when the Alt keyboard key is press or the 'A' 'Shift gadget' is selected. As an example the 'Copy' command is located (at startup default) on the first bank of gadgets in the upper left hand corner. This gadget can be activated by pressing the upper left hand keypad key which is the '(' key on the keypad. To access the 'Copy As' command press the Ctrl key and while holding it down press the upper left hand key of the keypad. This is the same as using the mouse to select the 'C' 'Shift gadget' and then selecting the upper left hand corner gadget (which should be labelled 'Copy as' at default). NOTE: Should you have a MegaD text window active, the keypad is used solely for the text window, and the Keypad Command Gadget functions will not be accessible. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 15 |---------------------------------------------------------------| | Ctrl Command | Shift Command| Alt Command | Keypad '*' | | |--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------| C | | Keypad '7' | Keypad '8' | Keypad '9' | Keypad '-' | - | |--------------+--------------+--------------|--------------| | Shift Click Window Command Above is the upper section of the Keypad Command Gadgets. Notice that I have change the names of the first three Gadgets to, 'Ctrl Command', 'Shift Command' and 'Alt Command'. MegaD assigns the above three commands to the respective shift keys during a process that I call 'Shift Click Window Commands'. By using the 'Shift Click Window Commands', you can gain rapid access to three of your favorite commands. At default, MegaD sets the first three Keypad Commands Gadgets to, 'Copy', 'Move' and 'Delete'. This, in turn, sets the 'Shift Click Window Commands' to: Ctrl-Select Directory Window = 'Copy' Shift-Select Directory Window = 'Move' Alt-Select Directory Window = 'Delete' How Shift Click Works Let use 'Copy' for and example here. You would need at least two Directory Windows opened to the screen. You select a few items in one of the windows that you would like to copy. You would then hold down the Ctrl key while you select the scroll area (text listing area) of the Directory Window that you wish to copy the files to, this becomes the 'Shift Clicked Window'. The selected Directory Window becomes a user defined destination directory and the 'Copy' command is called. You can attach any commands you want, to the first three Keypad Command Gadgets of the first bank. The steps taken internally during the 'Shift Click Window Command' process is: 1. Select 'Dest'ination gadget of the Directory window that was 'Shift Selected'. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 16 2. Call corresponding Keypad Command Gadget for the shift key pressed and perform that task. 3. Un-select the 'Dest'ination gadget if it was not selected at the first of the call, restoring the Directory Window to it's original state. All of this is a bit much for right now. We have yet to talk about any of the commands, and how to use them. If all of this seems very vague to you, don't let it worry you. Just remember to come back and reread this section once your done. I want to make sure that everyone using MegaD knows of this feature. Other wise it like driving a great car without knowing it has a fifth gear and never getting it to top speed. | Third Buffered Volume WORK: 22,343,548 |\/| |---------------------------------------------------------------| |**| Device Gadget 1 | Device Gadget 4 | Device Gadget 7 | |**|-------------------+---------------------+------------------| | | Device Gadget 2 | Device Gadget 5 | Device Gadget 8 | | |-------------------+---------------------+------------------| | | Device Gadget 3 | Device Gadget 6 | Device Gadget 9 | | |-------------------+----------------------------------------| | | Device Name: | | | |------------------------------------------------------------| |**| Files Selected Chip | |**| Dir. Selected Fast | | | Bytes Selected Large | |**| Free Disk space Total | |**| Active Directory | |---------------------------------------------------------------| Icon Gadgets Among these gadgets are three that are very unique in design and nature. They reside on the left side of the window. The character representation of the gadgets is ** ** You can identify them in the actual Control Window by a small horizonal line going across, inside of the border of the gadget. By careful examination of the gadgets you MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 17 will notice that the horizonal line is at different position inside of the border. For lack of a better name I call these gadgets, Area Icons. They each represent one of the three lower areas of the Control Window. As the icon gadgets are hit, they will remove or replace areas of the main window. The icon gadget themselves will stay in the window. Device Icon Gadget: The gadget with the line closest to the top is directly attached to the set of 9 device gadgets in the upper mid section of the control window. Selecting this 'device icon gadget' will remove these 9 device gadgets from the main menu, thereby allocating more space to view the rest of the menu. Byte Info Icon Gadget: The gadget that has the line across the center of it is directly attached to the text section of the window that displays selected information and system memory. Selecting this 'byte info icon gadget' will remove the area containing system memory from the main menu, thereby allocating more space to view the rest of the menu. Keypad Icon Gadget: And finally, the small gadget with the line closest to the bottom is directly attached to the command gadgets which are arranged in the same manner as the numeric keypad on the side of the Amiga keyboard (this keypad is not present on the 600 and 1000 Amiga models). Selecting this 'keypad icon gadget' will remove the area containing the numeric keypad gadgets from the main menu, thereby allocating more space to view the rest of the menu. NOTE: You can remove more than one of these areas from the main menu. For instance, click on the upper area icon gadget and notice that the 9 device gadgets are removed from the main menu. Now click on the lower area gadget and notice that the 'Numeric Keypad' gadgets are gone from the menu. All that you are viewing at this time are the 'Volumes Information' area (the very upper portion of the normal main menu) and the 'System Memory Information' area. You could now click on the center area icon gadget and MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 18 remove the 'System Memory Information' area. At this point, the entire main menu would be displaying the "Volume Information" area. I suggest that you play with those gadgets for a while just so that you can see how they work. Select one of the icon gadgets once and an area will be removed from the window, making the scroll area larger. The icon gadget will be repositioned in the window so that it will fit in the new configuration. The color of the horizonal line in the gadget will change to signify that the area has been removed. Find the gadget again and selected it once more. That area will be replace in the Control Window. Once your done playing with them be sure to set the window back up so that all four areas of the window are visible and usable. Active Window To Front Whenever you open a directory/text window, MegaD will automatically bring that new window to the front of all other windows. Furthermore, if a currently open, directory/text window is selected (made active by clicking on it), it will automatically be moved to the front of all other windows. Moving the Control Window to the front This 'auto-front' feature does not apply to the MegaD control (main menu) window. There are; however, three function keys that will allow you to move the control window to the front/rear of the screen. The three keys are F8, F9 and F10. One more catch though - each key can serve more than one purpose. I'll try to explain: Remember from the beginning of the manual about the very top of the control panel. There is a gadget which toggles between "Volumes In Memory" and "Devices, Assigns and Drives". The second feature of each of these keys deals with this portion of the control panel. F8: (1) Will toggle to 'Devices, Assigns and Drives', and MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 19 (2) Will toggle the control window between the front and back of the screen. F9: (1) Will toggle to 'Volumes In Memory', and (2) Will toggle the control window between the front and back of the screen. F10: The sole purpose of this key is to toggle the control window between the front and back of the screen. NOTE: If the you have set MegaD F10 default to 'F10 Closes Main Control Window', the control window will be closed and reopened with this key. What Is MegaD MegaD's main function on the Amiga is to do something with a directory list or item in the directory list. We will need some medium to work with that we both have. I am going to use a copy of the Workbench disk that came with our operating system to demonstrate some of the simple functions of MegaD. So that we can have a common references, you will be making a copy of your Workbench disk. Create a Tutorial Disk You should make a copy of the copy of your Workbench disk. (You should only use your original disks once, and that was to make the copy that you will use when you run a program. Any program.) This disk contains many files that we can do things with. I will be using the directories and files as examples of how the commands in MegaD work. Loading the copy of your Workbench disk Place the copy of your Workbench disk into your DF0: disk drive. Use the toggle gadget in the upper portion of the MegaD control window to ensure "Devices, Assigns and Drives" (rather than "Volumes In Memory") is selected. Now use the scroll gadget at the upper right of the control window, and scroll until 'DF0:' is visible in the "Devices, Assigns and Drives Window" (immediately below MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 20 the "Free Volumes" gadget). Double-click on 'DF0:' in this window. A new window should open on your screen displaying all the directories and files on the disk you inserted in 'DF0:'. (NOTE: an alternate, and sometimes easier way, to accomplish the above is to simply enter 'DF0:' in the string gadget (in the center of the control window labelled 'Device Name') and hit the <return> key). Directory Windows This is a character representation of the directory window that came up when I loaded my Workbench disk. Yours should look similar. ------------------------ | Workbench2.0: |#|@|<- Top window drag bar, close and |-----------------------| Zoom Gadgets | Parent / |Dest|Lock| |<- Parent, Destination, Lock gadgets |--------------------| | | C | | | Devs | | | Expansion | | | Fonts | | | L | | | Libs <---------- Scrolling list area. | monitors | | | Prefs | | | Rexxc | | | S | | | System | | | Trashcan | | | Utilities | | | WBStartup | | | disk.info | | | Expansion.info | | | Monitors.info | | | Prefs.info | | | Shell.info | | | System.info | <- Vertical scrolling gadget | Trashcan.info | | | Utilities.info | | | WBstartup.info | | | | | ----------------------/\|<- Up arrow | |<|>| \/|<- Left, Right, Down arrow ------------------------ and horizonal scrolling gadget MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 21 The anatomy of a directory window This window has two main parts. The upper gadgets and the list area. I will discuss the upper gadgets first. All directory windows have a 'Parent', 'Dest'ination, and 'Lock' gadget. Parent Gadget The 'Parent' will move you to the parent of the current directory. Once at the Root: (This is where we are now) the 'Parent' will bring the Main Control Window to the front unless it is in two window mode. 'Dest'ination The 'Dest'ination gadget tells MegaD which directory(s) is the specified destination directory. This is important because many commands (such as copy, move, etc) will transfer files from the 'origin' directory to the 'destination' directory. The 'Dest'ination gadget actually has three states. Un-selected, Selected and User Selected. Un-selected and Selected look like any other toggle selected gadgets on an Amiga window. The User Selected mode draws a double border around the selected gadget. MegaD will keep the active window as the destination unless you use the mouse to select the 'Dest'ination gadget. To demonstrate the 'User Selected' mode, activate the open directory window by selecting the drag bar at the top of the window. The 'Dest'ination gadget of this window should now be selected. MegaD auto- select the 'Dest'ination gadget of the active window. Now select the 'Dest'ination gadget with by selecting it with the mouse. The border of the gadget will change, it will have a recess area with the outside of the border still looking as if it is pushing out from the window. This is the 'User Selected' mode of the 'Dest'ination gadget. This disables the 'Auto-Select' feature. The User Selected gadget also forces newly loaded directories into that window unless it is 'Lock'ed. Finally, select the 'Dest'ination gadget once more. It will MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 22 become unselected and look like the 'Parent /' and 'Lock' gadget in the window. For certain commands, such as 'Copy' and 'Move', the window(s) with the unselected 'Dest'ination gadget becomes the source or origin directory window(s). Lock Gadget The 'Lock' gadget tells MegaD that this window is locked and that no other directories can be placed into this window. It does not lock the internal directory list it displays. You may perform any function on the items in the list that you want. If all windows are 'Lock'ed and you request a new directory to be opened, a new window will be opened to place it in. Think of it as a house with all the doors locked. You come home and find that you do not have the keys to get in. What do you do? You open a window, MegaD does the exact same steps. Check the first door, Second, Third... finally all the doors are locked it will open a window to do it's job. Later on, their will be a section that describes the use of the 'Lock' gadget, we will clarify this feature then. Close Window Gadget All directory windows have a standard window close gadget except for the two window mode. This close gadget only closes the window. It does not free the memory used to contain the directory list. This has the advantage that when that directory is needed again it will not have to read the directory again and the list will be displayed instantly. It has the disadvantage of using memory. You can use your Control Window Free Volumes gadget to release that memory to the system. Scrolling List Area The scrolling area is much like any other scrolling area of other Amiga programs windows. The proportional gadgets show you how much of the list is being displayed and allows you to move the list up and down if the full list cannot be displayed at one time. The arrow gadgets allow you to step though the list one item at a time. You may hold one of the arrows down and the action will repeat until you reach the end of the direction that you were moving the list in. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 23 MegaD also has one more way to scroll the list. Menu Button Scroll By having the mouse pointer in the scroll area of the active window and then pressing the Menu Select button on the mouse the mouse pointer becomes your scroller for the window. Moving the mouse 'off center' of the scroll area the window will start to scroll in that direction. So if you move the mouse pointer to the top of the window it will scroll the list down revealing more of the upper part of the list. The same happens if you move the mouse to the bottom or to the sides of the window. Accessing Menus To get to the menu you must be outside of the scroll area of the active window. The easiest place to do this is at the top of the screen where the menu bar will pop up. Your mouse will be out of any of the possible scroll areas, and ready to select the menu item that you want. Selecting Items Items within the scroll area can be selected in one of three ways with the mouse pointer. Single Select Item Single clicking any item in the Directory Window will toggle the state of that item. If it was not selected it will become selected, if it was selected it will become un-selected. Double Click Item Double clicking any item in the Directory Window tells MegaD that you want it to do something with that item. Double Click Directory If it is a directory, MegaD will attempt to load that directory and place it in a window. Double Click File If it is a file and the menu item 'Option, Activate AutoBoot' is set, MegaD will read the first few bytes of the file and see if there is something that it can do with it. At default, MegaD can load and display a text file and it can load and run a program file. However, you will be able to teach it to handle all of the different types of data MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Introduction 24 files that you use. We will get into this later. Drag Select Items Drag select a group of items. This is done by selecting the start or end of the area that you wish to select. The select state of the first item you select determines what color the rest of the items that you drag select become. Once the first item is selected move the mouse pointer up or down depending on which way you want to select the items in the list. If you move beyond the scroll area the window will scroll, selecting or un-selecting the items as they move into the window. Abort Drag Select Should you decide to abort the drag select, move the mouse to the outside left or right of the window and release the mouse select button, this will return all of the items to the same state that were before the drag select was started. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 25 Simple Commands And MegaD ========================= Relabel Now that we have explored two of the most common windows that we will use with MegaD. We are going to do a command. We are going to relabel the copy of the copy of Workbench that we made to a new name. We will do this so that we will be less likely to damage our working copy of Workbench. If you haven't done so yet, make a new copy of your Workbench at this time. When complete, return to this manual. Relabel under 1.3 If your still using Workbench1.3 MegaD will not do the relabel command. (And your really missing out on a great improvement on the Amiga Operating System.) File away your original working copy of Workbench, and place your newly created copy in drive 'df0: You will have to do it from a CLI window. The command line that you will enter will be Relabel DF0: Tutorial Be sure to have your copy of the Workbench disk in drive DF0: before issuing this command. Relabel under 2.0 and Using MegaD To relabel under 2.0, place the newly created working copy of WB in 'df0:'. We will first load the root directory of 'df0:'. To do this, use the toggle gadget in the upper portion of the MegaD control window to ensure "Devices, Assigns and Drives" is selected (or as an alternate method, hit the F8 key). Now use the scroll gadget or the scroll arrows at the upper right of the control window until 'DF0:' appears in the volume window (the window immediately below the 'Free Volume' gadget). Double click on 'DF0:' in the volume window. A window should appear on your screen which displays the root directory of 'df0:'. Now we must tell MegaD that we want to perform an operation on a volume, so use the upper toggle gadget again to change from "Devices, Assigns and Drives" to "Volumes In Memory". We've just told MegaD that we are going to perform some (as yet unknown) operation on a volume. We must now MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 26 tell it which volume. To do this, single click on 'DF0:' in the volume window. Notice that when you single click on 'DF0:', it changes color to indicate that it is now 'selected'. Finally, now that we've told MegaD which volume we want to perform an operation on, we have to tell it which operation to perform. We are going to use the gadgets at the lower portion of the control window for this. We are looking for the "Relabel" gadget. On first glance we can't find it. That's because it is not visible until we press the 'Ctrl' key on the keyboard. Press and hold the 'Ctrl' key and notice that all of the bottom gadgets change. Furthermore, the gadget that was labelled "Rename" is now called "Relabel". Release the 'Ctrl' key now. The gadgets all change back to their original state. Find the gadget on the far right of the lower control panel which is labelled 'C' (it is immediately to the right of the "Rename" gadget). Select the 'C' gadget. Notice that all the lower gadgets change once again. As a matter of fact, clicking on the 'C' gadget performs the same function that holding down the 'Ctrl' key did. Once again, the "Rename" gadget has changed to the "Relabel" gadget. To initiate the relabelling of the disk in 'DF0:', select the "Relabel" gadget. A new requestor pops up that reads: Volume Name Copy_of_Workbench2.0: Enter the new name to relabel this volume to This requestor is asking for the new name of the disk in 'DF0:'. Erase the old name, and replace it with 'Tutorial'. Finally press the return key on your keyboard and the disk name will change to 'Tutorial'. Using the Tutorial Disk From here on out, all of the commands we will learn will be performed on this disk and your Ram Disk:. I am sure that the Tutorial: disk will be useless once we are done. It will be copied to, deleted from, files written to it, directories moved, etc. etc. So before we go MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 27 on any further let me ask you this question. YOUR NOT USING YOUR GOOD COPY OF YOUR WORKBENCH DISK ARE YOU? If so Please make a copy of it and catch up with me here. Setting the device gadgets We are going to be using the Tutorial: disk all through this. It will be nice to set one of the nine device gadgets to that name. This way you will be able to load that disk with a simple click of the mouse button. Set Preferences In the very first menu of MegaD, which is the Project menu, you will find the menu item 'Set Preferences..." Select this menu item. A window will open with many string and booleen gadgets. We are only concerned at this moment with the nine string gadgets arranged at the bottom of this window. Most if not all of them should be set to something already. We want two of them to be set for our specifications for the purpose of this tutorial. We need one with the title "Ram Disk:" (this may already be set.) and the second to read "Tutorial:" Please note the ':' colon at the end of the name. It needs to be there. After setting two device gadgets to our specifications select the 'Save' gadget. This will write the MegaD preference file (MegaD.pf) to the same directory that you loaded MegaD from and in doing so you will not have to reset the gadgets each time you run MegaD. The file will save and the MegaD Preference window will close. The device gadgets in the Control Window will now show the modifications that you just performed. You should now have one of the gadgets reading 'Ram Disk:' and another reading 'Tutorial:' Auto Save when Quit MegaD is set at default to save the preference file every time you quit. Each time you are done using MegaD, and quit the program, MegaD will save it's preference file. This way you will never need to worry about saving the changes. Eventually saving the preference file each time you quit will MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 28 be a waist of time, we will show you how to change this setting later. Simple Commands The first set of commands that I am going to go though will be the simple commands that work without a source and destination directory. Commands such as 'Set Protect', Create Dir' 'View Text'... They are simple to explain and so it will be the best place to start. Delete Command Place your Tutorial: disk in any of your floppy disk drives. Select the 'Tutorial:' device gadget. The Tutorial: disk will load and the directory will be placed into a directory window. In the newly opened 'Tutorial' window, you will see a number of directories and files ('C', 'Devs', 'Expansion', etc). One of these directories is labelled 'C'. Double click on this 'C' directory in the 'Tutorial' text window. The 'C' directory will load and replace the 'Tutorial:' directory list in the open window. This directory contains upwards of 165,000 bytes of files. We are going to need some room on this disk to perform some future functions so we will delete most of the files in this directory. We will drag select the first few items in the directory window. Select the top item and drag select (by holding the select button down) downward until just before you reach the 'Dir' entry in this window. Now release your mouse select button. When you release the mouse button, you should notice that approximately the top 11 files (all the way down to but not including the 'Dir' file) in this window are highlighted, and that the remaining (bottom) files are not highlighted. We do not want to delete the 'Dir' command, we will be using it for another function later. Final Warning NOTE: This is the last time I will warn you. You Must be using a copy of your Workbench disk!!!!! You have now selected a number of files for some function. We are going to delete the files selected. Remember, we have four banks of gadget and that the first bank of MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 29 gadget is access when none of the keyboard shift keys and non of the 'Shift Gadgets' are selected by the Keypad Gadgets, The 'Delete" function is located in the first bank of gadgets on the second keypad gadget from the right on the top row. Select the 'Delete' gadget. You will get a requestor that reads something like this: 11 File/s marked for delete 0 Directory/ies marked for delete Continue With two gadgets in it, Yes and No. Select the Yes gadget. This can be done with the mouse or from your keyboard. Any gadget with an 'underlined' character in it, can be selected by using the corresponding key on your keyboard. Panic Window A window will open. This window is called the Panic Window. It shows you what MegaD is currently doing. It has two gadgets at the bottom. Suspend and Cancel. The Suspend gadget will suspend the current activity, and let you think about 'continuing', by hitting suspend again, or 'aborting' with the Cancel gadget. As the file are deleted they will be displayed in the Panic window. Once all the marked files are deleted the Panic window will close, the directory window will be updated to show the files that were removed from it. Now we will drag select all of the other items in the 'C' directory leaving the 'Dir' file entry un-selected. Select the Delete gadget once more to remove the rest of the files from the disk. You will have noticed that it took very little time to delete this large number of files. This should scare you just enough to be cautious when using the Delete function. Under normal methods the deleted files are gone forever from that disk. Rename The 'Dir' file should be the only file remaining in your 'C' directory at this time. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 30 Select this 'Dir' directory (by single clicking on it), and then select the 'Rename' gadget. This gadget is in the first bank of command gadgets. On the top row, far right side. A request window will open that will have 'Dir' in the string gadget. Change the name to "Directory" and press return. The filename will change on the disk and in the directory window to 'Directory'. Rename the file back to it's original name 'Dir'. Set Protect Each Amiga files has a set of BITs that are associated with it. They tell the operating system what it can and can not do with the file. The different bits are represented by letters: Protection Bits r The file can be read. w The file can be written to (altered). e The file is executable (a program (not always the case though)) d The file can be deleted s The file is a script. p The file is a pure command and can be made resident. a The file has been archived. ? Were not sure. (Commodore/Amiga has not finalize what this bit will be used for) Display Protect Bits To get MegaD to display these bits and their settings you need to select the menu item 'Show, Protection' so that it has a check mark in front of it. Reformat Directory Windows The open directory window should now be displaying the protection bits with the directory items. If not, select the 'Show, Reset All' menu item, this will force all open directory windows to reformat the information to the 'Show' menu settings. We left the 'Dir' file in the 'C' directory of the Tutorial: disk. If the window to that directory is not opened, open it now. Select the directory entry for 'Dir'. We are going to reset the protection bits of that file with the MegaD 'Set Protect' command. This command is located on the first bank of command gadgets, second row to the far left. Select this gadget. A window will open with MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 31 eight check gadgets. One check gadget for each bit. We want to protect this file from deletion. Select the top check gadget, which is 'd Delete', so that the check mark is not visible in it. Then select the Use Gadget. The d flag will no longer be visible for the 'Dir' directory item. Did it really protect this file from deletion? Select the 'Dir' entry once again and try to use the MegaD Delete command. You should end up with a requestor that reads: File dir is protected Delete anyway? Answer No to this requestor, we still need the 'Dir' file for a later lesson. MegaD recognized that the bit was set, and that the file could not be deleted. If you would have answered Yes to the requestor MegaD would have set the delete bit so that it could be deleted, and delete it. Auto Destination Place the Tutorial: disk in one of the drives if it is not already. Then select the Tutorial: device gadget to open a directory window to it. You will notice that the 'Dest'ination gadget is selected in this window. MegaD selects the active directory window on the screen as the destination directory. Some of MegaD commands require that a destination window be available. Create Directory The 'Create Dir' command is one of those commands that needs a destination. The 'Create Dir' command gadget is located in the first bank of command gadgets, second row, second from the left of the window. Select this gadget and a requestor will open to the screen that should read: Destination Directory Tutorial: Enter the new name for the directory to create It will have a string gadget to enter a directory name to create in the current destination directory. Enter 'My_directory' MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 32 into the string gadget. Then press return, remember that any requestor that has only one string gadget, pressing 'return' in that string gadget is the same as hitting the 'Use' gadget. The new directory "My_directory" will be created on the disk, and the window will be updated to show the change. MegaD also created a drawer icon with this directory as "My_directory.info". This 'auto-icon' feature can be disabled (and we'll show you how later on). Text Reader MegaD has a very powerful built in text reader which can be used to read any text file. It will read non-text files or word processor files to, but the formatting of the text may be somewhat erratic. On the Tutorial: disk you will find some text files in the S: directory. This is the Amiga Startup drawer and many script files can be found there. We are going to get MegaD to read and place the information found in one of the files in to a text window. Loading a text file Open a Directory Window for the Tutorial: disk if one is not already opened. Double click the 'S' directory so that MegaD will read the 'S' directory and swap it into the same window. Single select the "Startup-sequence" file. With that file highlighted select the command gadget "View Text", it is found in the first bank of command gadgets, second row, second from the right. The file will be read from the disk and place into a text window. Text Window Parts This window has the same type of proportional gadgets and arrow step gadgets that a Directory Window has. They work in the same manner as the Directory Window did except that they move your view position of the text to other unseen areas. Text Window Menu You will find that the text window has it's own menu. This menu will let you do a wide variety of functions such as set the text color, print the text visible in the window or the whole text file. It has cursor moves MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 33 to jump to the first or last of the file. It will let you search for a string of characters. Text Window Keys Many of the keys on your keyboard will perform the same functions as your menu. This is a list of them. Text Window Keypad Key Key Front Action 8 Up Arrow Cursor up one line 2 Down Arrow Cursor down one line 4 Left Arrow Cursor left one line 6 Right Arrow Cursor right one line 7 Home First of text file 1 End Last of text file ( NumL Toggle hex mode 0 Ins Repeat last search . Del Search string 9 Pg Up Page up once 3 Pg Dn Page down once Your cursor keys will move the text in the window in the same direction as the keys point. The window close gadget or your 'Esc' key will close the text window. Close this text window. Double Click Text File We will load the same text file again but we will not use the 'View Text' command gadget. Double click the text file the same as you would double click an icon on the Workbench. MegaD will check the file to see if it contains text and if so it will load the text in to a text window. This, I am sure will become your standard way to load a text file, the double click of a known text file will become second nature to read it. Once again close this text window. Multiple Text Windows As I said MegaD, has a very powerful text viewer, but what we have seen so far is not all that uncommon. What makes the MegaD's text viewer so unique is the fact that you may have as many text windows open at one time as you like and your system memory will MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 34 allow. To demonstrate this I want you to select about three files in the 'Tutorial:S' directory. With those three files selected select the 'View Text' command gadget. MegaD will load all of the selected text files and place each one in a different text window. Manipulating Multiple Text Windows You can toggle through all of the text window by using your 'F7' function key. Each time you press 'F7' the next text window will be moved to the front of the screen. We are now done with text windows, so close all of the text windows that you just opened. File Comments Each directory entry in a directory list can have a file comment associated with it. The comment is a good place to keep special notes with your files. Maybe the file is associated with another file such as a program, yet the name of the file does not seem to relate to it. By adding a comment that tells you of this association to a file it can be easily identified at a later time. The comment can be up to 79 characters long. It can say anything you want it to say. Adding comments to your files will not use anymore space on your disk, the space that the comment is stored is allocated away from your free disk space at the time the file or directory was created. Once again we will need to have the Tutorial: directory window open to the screen. Select the first item in this window. Now that the directory item is selected select the 'File Comment' command gadget, this command is in the first bank, bottom row, far left. It is actually two gadgets wide, to represent the '0' key on your keypad. Once you select this command a request window will open that should read like this: Source Directory Tutorial: Source Filename C Destination Directory Tutorial: MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 35 Enter comment to add to this file A string gadget is in the bottom that reads: File comment And finally four select gadgets: Use, All, Skip, Cancel In the string gadget type 'This is a comment' and press return. The comment will be written to the disk for that file or directory, in my case it was the directory 'C'. The comment should not be visible. But an '*' was place in the line that we selected to enter the comment for. Set Show Comment To actually see the comment in the Directory Window you will need to set the menu item 'Show, Comment' so that a check mark is in front of the 'Comment'. If the comment is still not visible select the 'Show, Reset All" menu item to force reformatting of all open directory window. Setting Multiple Comments You may set groups of files with the same comment. This is the purpose of the 'All' gadget that was in the 'Set Comment' requestor. At this moment I want you to drag select all of the files in the Tutorial: Directory Window. Select the 'File Comment' command gadget. Now in the requestors string gadget enter 'All have a comment' and instead of pressing return select the All gadget. This will only take a moment and all of the entries in this directory will have the file comment 'All have a comment' associated with them. Before we leave this section select the menu item 'Show, None'. This will un-clutter the directory windows while we go though the Tutorial. Later you will find that you like to have certain file attributes showing such as the size of the file. But for now we are more interested in learning the commands and the less clutter we have the easer it will be. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 36 Update Dir I will not be teaching you how to use this function as much as when to use this function. Buffered Directories MegaD buffers directories. This means that MegaD stores a copy of the disk structure in the computers memory. It does this so that you do not have to wait for the directory to reload when you need it again. One of the pitfalls this method is that if the directory is changed on the disk by another program other than MegaD, MegaD's buffered directory will be inaccurate. An example of this would be: You use MegaD to open a Directory Window to the directory that you store your word processing files. You switch to using the word processor, create a new file and save that new file in your word processing file directory. You switch back to using MegaD so that you may do something with the file that you just saved using your word processor and find that the newly created file is not listed with the other items in the directory. MegaD simply does not know that the new file exists. 'Update Dir' only updates the destination directories on the screen. Selecting the 'Update Dir' gadget while the 'Dest'ination gadget is selected for this window will force MegaD to reload the directory and re-display any new information found. 'Update Dir' is located on the first bank of command gadgets bottom row, far right hand side. Select/Clear commands You may have notice that I have skipped over the commands that start with 'Select', 'Clear', 'Sel' and 'Clr'. You will find a wide variety of these types of commands on both first bank and the second bank of the command gadgets. They work on open Directory Windows in different ways. They all ether select or clear (un-select) items in Directory Window. Some work on all items, some only work of files or directory items, MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 37 some only work on source Directory Window. Most of them are very simple, Such as 'Select All', by selecting this Command Gadget all items in all open Directory Windows will become selected. 'Clr dir' will clear or un- select all directories in open Directory Window. 'SelSrcFile' will select all source (non-'Dest'ination windows) files in open Directory Window. All in all there are 14 of these types of commands. You may want to play around with these. There is not a lot to them except for two special types. Patterns and ABoot (AutoBoot). 'Patterns' can be confusing. They work much the same as 'Filters' and 'Find'. These three will be discussed later in the Tutorial. ABoot (AutoBoot) requires an AutoBoot to have been defined before it can be used so this too will have to wait until we can dig into the concept and use of AutoBoots. Duplicate 'Duplicate' is used to create a new copy of a file or directory in the same directory that the file or directory is in. The duplicate file or directory needs to have a different name than the original, this being that you can not have two files or directories of the same name in any particular directory. The 'Duplicate' Command Gadget is found in the second (Ctrl) bank on the second row, far left of the Command Gadgets. Again we will need to have the Tutorial: directory window open to the screen. If you have been going along with this Tutorial you should have only one item left in the 'C' directory of this disk. Double click the 'Tutorial:C' directory to read and display the contents. Here we have the "Dir" file that was renamed to "Directory" and then back to "Dir". We are going to make a duplicate of this file. Duplicate a File Select the directory item "Dir" in the Tutorial:C Directory Window. Select the 'Duplicate' Command Gadget. A request window will open that should reads: Source Directory Tutorial:C MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 38 Source Filename Dir Destination Directory Tutorial:C Enter filename to duplicated this file as You will also find a string gadget that is titled "Filename" and in this string gadget you will find the original name of the file that you wish to duplicate, "Dir". Change the string in this string gadget to read. "Duplicated" and press the return key. The file will be copied to the same directory under the name "Duplicated". The Directory Window will be updated to show the new file. This same command will work on full directories if you wish to do so. Go Deep 'Go Deep' is used to read and place the selected directories or volumes into MegaD's buffers. You may find other reasons to use this command but its main purpose is to calculate how many bytes of disk space a particular directory or set of directories take up to store on disk. Set Show Size To better see how this works, select the menu item 'Show, Size' so that a 'check mark' is in front of the menu item. Once again we will need to have the Tutorial: directory window open to the screen. The size of files and directories will now be displayed in the Directory Windows. If the size of the files are not being shown, select the menu item, 'Show, Reset All' to force the re-display of all open Directory Windows. Calculating Directory Sizes You will notice that the directories in this window show "(dir)" in the same column that the files of the window show the file size. MegaD can not tell how many bytes of disk space a directory uses until that full directory has been buffered. We will tell it to read and buffer one of the directories. Select the "Devs" entry of the "Tutorial:" MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 39 Directory Window. Now select the 'Go Deep' Command Gadget. It is located on the second (Ctrl) Command Gadgets bank, second row, far right. After doing so MegaD will read and buffer any selected directory in any open Directory Window. Once it has finished reading the directory it will calculate the actual space used by this directory and replace the "(dir)" with that information. Empty Directories If the directory is empty the size will not be shown and it will be left displaying "(dir)". 'Go Deep' will also work on multiple groups of selected directories. Drag Select the first three or so directory items in the Tutorial: Directory Window, be sure not to select all of them. There is one more variation on the 'Go Deep' command that I want to show you later on that will need a few other directories to read and buffer. After selecting a few other directories select the 'Go Deep' Command Gadget. MegaD will do the same to the selected directories as it did with the one directory selected earlier. Buffering a Full Volume You may tell MegaD to go deep and buffer the full volume by selecting the entry of the volume in the 'Volumes In Memory' list. Select the Tutorial: entry in this list and then select the 'Go Deep' Command Gadget. You will notice that the other directories that are still buffered whiz by at high speed in the Panic Window. MegaD knows what is there and recalculates from memory for those directories. It will also read all of the un-buffered directories on this disk and buffer and calculate the directories sizes for them also. Now you should be able to see the sizes of all directories that are not empty. Iconify Iconify puts MegaD to sleep so that it can be called upon later if needed. Iconify works differently depending on what operating system you are using. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 40 1.3 Iconify If you are still using Workbench 1.3, Iconify opens a small window on the Workbench screen and closed all other MegaD window. To reopen MegaD, activate the small window and select the right mouse button as you would if you wanted to select a menu item. This will reactivate MegaD so that you can use it again. MegaD currently supports Workbench1.3 but in future releases this support will be removed. Workbench2.0 offers much more for both you the user and the developers. 2.0 Iconify If you are using Workbench2.0 MegaD uses what is called an Application Icon when in Iconify mode. To iconify MegaD, select the menu item 'Project/Iconify'. Please do so at this time. This icon is placed on the Workbench screen, and looks much like any other icon. It will have the title of MegaD 2.xx under the icon. The icon can be double clicked to call MegaD. In doing so the Control Window will be reopened. Dropping icons onto the Application Icon You can also drag and drop other icons onto the MegaD application icon to have MegaD try to perform some type of action on the items dropped. At the very least, this action will reopen the Control Window. Here is a list of things that could be dropped onto the MegaD application icon and what will happen. Drop a Disk Icon. By dropping the disk icon onto the application icon MegaD, will reopen and load the volume dropped and open a Directory Window to display it's contents. Drop a Drawer Icon By dropping a drawer icon onto the application icon MegaD will reopen and load the drawer dropped and then open a Directory Window to display it's contents. Drop a Program Icon By dropping a program Icon onto the application icon, MegaD will reopen and open a window called "Program Control" that will allow you to run the program in a number of different ways. This window is complex and will be explained when we get into using AutoBoots, User Gadgets, and Menu sets later. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 41 Drop a Text File Icon If you drop a text file icon on to the application icon, MegaD will reopen, load the text file and place it into a text window for viewing. Drop a Project Icon If you drop a project icon on to the application icon and MegaD has been trained to know what to do with that type of data through the AutoBoot program controls. This could be a graphics file and MegaD would call your favorite graphics viewer. This could be a word processor file and MegaD will call the word processor to allow you to edit it. Application Menu Along with the Application Icon being placed onto the Workbench screen another feature of Workbench2.0 is used. Two new menu items will be placed into the Workbench Tool menu. One is "Call MegaD" to reopen the MegaD Control Window and the other is "Quit MegaD" to quit and unload the MegaD code that is in memory at the moment. To illustrate this feature, please iconify MegaD by selecting the menu item 'Project/Iconify'. Notice that all MegaD directory windows and the MegaD control window disappear. Further notice that a new MegaD icon was created on your Workbench screen. With MegaD still iconified, select the Workbench menu item 'Tools/Call MegaD'. Notice that the MegaD control window reopens. If you were observant when you selected the Workbench menu item 'Tools/Call MegaD', you noticed another menu item labelled 'Tools/Quit MegaD'. These are the two application menus when MegaD is iconified Quitting MegaD MegaD has five ways to quit and unload the program code from memory. One, the window close gadget in the Control Window. Two, the Quit menu item in the project menu. Three Right-Amiga Q, the menu equivalent of 'Quit'. Four, the Command Gadget 'Quit'. And five, the "Application Menu", "Tools, Quit MegaD" from the Workbench screen. All four do exactly the same thing. The 'Quit' Command Gadget is located on the second (Ctrl) bank, bottom row, second from the right of the Command Gadgets. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 42 Disk Labels MegaD has a complete facility for creating disk labels with very little effort. A printer is required to create them. MegaD can be set to use any size label. It comes set at default to work with an Avery brand pin fed label. The product number is 4241. But as mentioned it can be set to use the label of your choice and this is done by the menu item 'Project, Defaults'. Labels can be created from scratch (manually) or from information selected in the directory window for a volume. Manual Label To create a label manually, Be sure that there are no items selected in any of the Directory Windows and that none of the 'Volumes In Memory' items are selected. Select the 'Label' Command Gadget that is located on the third (shift) bank, second row, far left. A window will open titled "Manual Labels". This window has 15 string gadgets and two booleen gadgets. The topmost string gadget is used to enter the volume name. This name is printed on the label in two places. Once where it can be seen at the top where the label folds over the top of the disk. The second time on the front of the label to title it. The other 14 string gadgets are there to enter whatever you want printed below the title. To print the label select the Print gadget. To clear all of the strings for a new label select the Clear gadget. The window close gadget will close the window. The 'Q' keyboard key will do the same function as the window close gadget. Auto Labels The second and quickest way to create a label is to select items in an open Directory Window or to select the volume name in the 'Volumes In Memory' list. After doing so and then selecting the Command Gadget 'Label' MegaD will print the selected information on to the disk label. I suggest that your load the Tutorial: volume into a Directory Window and try the different modes of the label print. Print to MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 43 plain paper so not to waist any labels and this will give you an idea of how simple it can be to create labels for your disks. Label Align Label align is used to help you align the labels in your printer before actually printing them. It needs to be done only once each time you load the pin fed labels into your printer. Label align prints two dots to the printer. The dots should be just above the label as to not write on the label and should be centered over the label. You may select Command Gadget 'Label Align' as often as you wish and the label will not be advance in the printer. The Command Gadget 'Label Align' is located on the third (shifted) bank, second row, second from the left of the Command Gadgets. Label Modify 'Lab. Modify' is a combination of the auto label and manual label modes. It places selected information found in the ''Volumes In Memory'' list or open Directory Window into the manual label window. This allows you to preview it and modify, before it is sent to the printer. The best way to understand this is to select a few items in Tutorial: Directory Window and select the Command Gadget 'Lab. Modify', this is located on the third (shifted) bank, second row, second from the right. The manual label window will open and the information will be placed into the window for modification. Select Print, Clear or close the window depending on what you want to do from this point. Duplicate Disk Labels 'Label Times' work the same as Label does only it will give you a requestor before printing the label and allow you to specify how many duplicates you need at the time. Select a couple of items in the Tutorial: Directory Window and select the Command Gadget 'Label Times', it is located on the third (shifted) bank second row far right. Once doing so a requestor will open that will read: MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 44 Enter the number of labels you wish to print for each marked volume A string gadget title "Number of labels" will be active, and will allow you to enter the quantity of labels to print. Enter a quantity if you want and press return or hit the Cancel gadget to abort the operation. Directory listings MegaD allows you to create, and then save or print a list of selected items in Directory Windows. The format and sort order of this list depends upon the settings you have selected in the 'Show' menu. This feature may not be abundantly clear at present, so let me explain. Output File If a directory is selected 'Output File' will create a list of all files and sub- directories found in the selected directory. The same is true if a volume is selected in the 'Volumes In Memory' list. It will create a complete directory listing of all files and directories on the selected volumes. To demonstrate this we will we will need to have the Tutorial: directory window open to the screen. 'Output File' requires a 'Dest'ination window to be available for it to write the file to. By opening the Tutorial: Directory Window the 'Dest'ination gadget of the Tutorial: Directory Window should have been automatically selected by MegaD. If it is not, select it before continuing. Select a couple of directories and a few of the files in the Tutorial: Directory Window. Then select the Command Gadget 'Output File', it is located on the third (shifted) bank of Command Gadgets, Third row, far left. After doing so a request window will open displaying this information: Destination Directory Tutorial: Enter output filename for Destination Directory MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 45 Below will be an active string gadget titled "Filename", enter "DirList" into this string gadget and press return. The selected directories will be read from the disk and all of the selected information will be written to the file "DirList" in the directory Tutorial:. The Tutorial: Directory Window will be updated to show the new file that has just been written. Now to take a quick look at what was done, double click the "DirList" file and MegaD will load and place that file in a text window so that it can be viewed. Output Format Each new level of sub-directories is indented four spaces. If any particular directory contains more than one file, then that directory's file list will be two columns wide. There is a slight variation to how the list can be printed. If you want tree lines to help trace the directories and sub-directory structures, you will find an option in the Output Menu that can be checked to do this. Place a check by the menu item 'Output, W/Tree Lines'. Now perform the actions required to create another directory listing and place that file into a text window just as we did before. Now you can compare the difference of the two outputs. We can create a full listings of the volume by selecting the Tutorial: entry in the 'Volumes In Memory' list. After doing so select the 'Output File' option again. After answering the requestor, MegaD will read through all of the directories and sub directories creating a list of everything that can be found on the volume. I find that this output directory list is very valuable when I am looking to free up a little space on my hard drive. Once the list is made I can scan through it looking for old files that can be archived or deleted. Programs that I no longer have the need to keep readily available. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 46 Output Prt This is the twin brother of the above described Output File. The only different between the Two is this will send the output to the printer through the PRT: device. MegaD's Spooler MegaD uses it's own spooler while doing any printing task. This lets you continue using MegaD while your printer is printing away. Cancel print jobs There are two special menu items that allow you to communicate with the spooler. You will find them under the 'Panic' menu. They are 'CANCEL PRINT' and 'CANCEL ALL PRINT'. 'CANCEL PRINT' will end the current print job and go on to the next job if one is waiting. 'CANCEL ALL PRINT' will cancel all print task waiting and the current print job. Printing Text Files 'Prt Text' will send a selected text file in any of the open Directory Windows to the spooler which in turn will send it to the printer. It will do some minor checking to see if the file can be printed. It will not let you try to print an executable file and it skips over .info files. MegaD is smart enough to prevent the printing of executable files and .info files; however, it cannot distinguish between text files and word processor formatted files. If you attempt to send a word processor formatted file to the printer with MegaD, the output will not be legible. A good test to be sure that the file is a text file is to double click the file or used the 'View Text' option to see if it will be read and placed into a text window. If you do not have a printer connected to your Amiga this option will not be of any value to you and you should not perform the following actions. We will once again need a window open to the "S" directory on the Tutorial: disk. Mark the Startup-Sequence file so that it is selected in the window. Then select he Command Gadget 'Prt Text' found on the third (shifted) bank, third row, second from the right. In a few moments the document will begin to be printed to your printer. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 47 You may select one or more text files and the 'Prt Text' command will send all of them to the printer one after the other. Though I do not suggest that you do this now unless you have a reason to create a number of hard copies of the text files. Searching Text Files 'Search Text' is used to find a word or string of text in one or more selected text files. For this example we will use the word "path". MegaD searches are not case sensitive. So "path" will match to "PATH", "Path", "pATH"... as long as it spells "path" the match will be true. It will look for the word "path" within other words, so if it comes across the words "pathway" it will be a match, though it may not be what you want. You can add spaces before the word and after the word such as " path " and the match to pathway will not be true anymore. But this will prevent path from being found if it were the first word on a new line such as "[RETURN]path " or it was the last word in a sentence that ended with a period like this " path." There is a very good chance that the word "path" can be found in one of the text files found in the "S" directory on the Tutorial: disk. Open a window to this directory and drag select all of the files found in it. Select the Command Gadget 'Search Text'. It is located on the third (shifted) bank, forth row, Second from the right. A requestor will open that read like this: Destination Directory Tutorial:S Enter the string to search for in all marked files ?, #?, * permitted Include optional filename to create a list of locations found MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 48 Below are two string gadgets titled "Search String" and "Optional filename for list" At this moment we only want to fill in the first string gadget "Search String" with "path". After typing "path" into the string gadget, select the "Use" gadgets with the mouse. MegaD will start to search though the selected files. Hopefully it will find the word you are searching for. If so it will bring up a requestor that reads like this. path Was found in path Tutorial:S under filename Startup-sequence Open This text window? Select the Yes gadget so that the text will be loaded and viewed with a text window. The first occurrence of the found string will be highlighted on the first line of the text window, any other occurrences, of the found string, that are visible in the text window will also be highlighted. Now close this text window. This is fine when you are looking for just one text file that has a string in it that you want to find. But there may be times that you wish to create a list of all occurrences of a string in one or more text files. To demonstrate this, we will once again select all of the files in the "Tutorial:S" directory. We must be sure that there is a destination window available. If the 'Dest'ination gadget is not selected for the "Tutorial:S" Directory Window, select it with your mouse. Select the Command Gadget 'Search Text' again. You should notice that the "Search String" gadget still contains the "path" string. Press return on this and the next string gadget will be activated. In this string gadget, "Optional filename for list" type "findList" and then select the "Use" gadget. If any matches are found a simple message will be placed to the screen, that should read: MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Simple One Window Commands 49 path was found 4 times and was saved in file Tutorial:S/FindList It will have a single gadget at the bottom titled "Continue" select this gadget and MegaD will open a text window of the newly created text file "findList". This text will show the path/s and filename/s that the string was found in, what lines they were found on, and a copy of each line the string was found in. As a personal note: I have found this to be a valuable tool. For example, another program I have, "cxref" includes a similar feature, it creates a cross reference. But there are times that the cross reference fail to list just what I want to find. The 'Search Text' feature of MegaD has performed well for me at these times, creating a very usable list of where I can find what I am looking for. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 50 Source and Destination Commands =============================== Up to this point, we have looked at commands which can be used with only one directory window. Hopefully you are now comfortable with the use of the Control Window and the Directory Windows. We have been limited in what we can do with one window. Commands such as 'Copy', 'Copy As', 'Move' and 'Move As' require two or more windows to work. They each require a source and a destination to perform their task. Destination Window Definition A destination window is any window that the 'Dest'ination gadget of the Directory Window is selected. Source Window Definition A source window is any Directory Window in which (a) the 'Dest'ination gadget is not selected, and (b) at least one directory item is selected. We will confine our use of the system to two volumes. The Tutorial: volume and the Ram Disk: volume. This way we will not mess up any important disk while we see what MegaD can do. We will also limit ourselves to using only one source directory and one destination directory at a time. Later we will work with multiples destination and source directories but not at this moment to keep confusion to a minimum. Action Warnings 'Copy', 'Copy As', 'Move' and 'Move As' will warn you before the command is executed and if you will be writing over the top of another file. The warnings can be turned off. For now we want to keep them around to insure that we do not do something we shouldn't. Auto 'Dest'ination How to use the auto 'Dest'ination feature. MegaD will select the 'Dest'ination gadget of the currently active Directory Window. This is the window that is active on the system, and can be distinguished from all inactive windows because it's window border will be a highlighted color. The Amiga operating system can only have one window active on the MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 51 system. You can have many windows doing different tasks, but only one of the windows will accept input from the user. This input is usually from the keyboard or the mouse. The window can be activated by selecting anywhere within and on the window borders. Active Window MegaD uses this active window to decide which Directory Window to select as the destination directory. As you select other Directory Window to become active the 'Dest'ination gadget will also be selected with it. Opening Two Directory Windows Open two Directory Windows by selecting the Tutorial: and Ram Disk: device gadgets. Watch the 'Dest'ination gadgets of the windows as they are opened. You will see the first Directory Window 'Dest'ination gadget become selected. When the next window opens the 'Dest'ination gadget of that window becomes selected and the first Directory Window 'Dest'ination gadget becomes unselected. Now that two Directory Windows are opened, activate the un-active Directory Window by selecting it, the 'Dest'ination gadget of the selected Directory Window will be set. The selection of Directory Windows for destination directory becomes second nature after using MegaD for a time. Last Active Window Destination For you who are used to the standard two window directory utility that have been available for the Amiga, this active window as the destination will seem backward. There is a check mark in the 'Project, Defaults...' that will switch this to last active window destination. Beware, you may not like it after you find how well MegaD works with multiple source directories. Overriding Auto Destination This feature can be overridden at anytime by selecting any Directory Window 'Dest'ination gadgets. Once the user does this the 'Dest'ination gadget will have a double drawn border the looks different than any other selected gadget. If you have not notice this yet select any 'Dest'ination gadget on a Directory Window, the border will change, MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 52 select it again and the 'Dest'ination gadget will become unselected with a normal border. Copying Files 'Copy' will create a copy of the selected file or files of a source directory in the destination directory. To do this we will need two Directory Windows open on the screen. Select the Tutorial: device gadget and the Ram Disk: device gadget. The Two directories will be loaded and place in separate Directory Windows. If you have been following along from the start you should find a text file titled "dirList" in the Tutorial: Directory Window, if not use any of the .info files in the Tutorial: Directory Window for this demonstration. Select the "dirList" file, then select the Ram Disk: Directory Window to activate it, I usually use the top window border, this way none of the directory items are accidently selected. As you activated it, the 'Dest'ination gadget of the Ram Disk: Directory Window became selected, showing it to be the destination directory. Now select the Command Gadget 'Copy', this is located on the first bank, top row, far left. After doing so you will get a requestor that reads: 1 file/s marked for copy 0 director/ies marked for copy to be copied to 1 directory window/s Continue Select 'Yes' and the file will be copied to the Ram Disk: and the Directory Window will be updated to show the newly copied file. Replace File Warning MegaD will warn you if you are going to write over the top of an old file, to demonstrate this will perform the same identical actions as before to copy the "DirList" file to the Ram Disk:. But now the file "DirList" exist on the destination directory and the warning will be produced. After trying to copy the file again this warning will be produced and MegaD will wait for your response to the following requestor: MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 53 You will be replacing the newer file DirList in directory Ram Disk: Replace it? If you answer yes the file will be overwritten by a new copy of it. This is inconsequential being the two files are identical but later on as you use MegaD you could replace a file the you wanted to keep only because it had the same name as the file you were copying. There are ways to turn off the warnings, but until you are sure of how MegaD works and what it can do, I suggest that you leave the warnings active. Copying Directories MegaD will also copy a directory and its contents, which could contain other directories and files. Select the 'C' directory in the Tutorial: Directory Window. Activate the Ram Disk: Directory Window to make it the destination directory, the 'Dest'ination gadget of that window should be selected. Select 'Copy' once again. A request window will open that should read: 0 Files marked for copy 1 Directory/ies marked for copy To be copied to 1 directory window/s Continue Answer 'Yes' and MegaD will read the contents of the selected directory and copy it. Once it is finished an exact duplicate of the selected directory will be created in the Ram Disk: Copying Groups of Files and Directories MegaD will copy groups of selected files and directories to a Directory Window. If you have enough spare memory on your Amiga that will allow you to you may want to try selecting a group of files and directories on the Tutorial: volume and copy them to the Ram Disk: volume. MegaD will not replace a directory with another directory or file. So if you try to copy the "Tutorial:C directory to the Ram MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 54 Disk: again it will fail. MegaD has the power to delete the directory and then copy the new one to it. I have chosen not to let MegaD perform this as a one step process. You the user will have to take the extra step to first 'Delete' the directory and then mark and copy the new directory or file into its place. Copy and Rename a File 'Copy As' is used to copy the file as 'Copy' does, but you have a way to give the copy of the file a different name than the original. It functions 100% the same a the 'Copy' command works except for this. To demonstrate this you will follow the exact same steps as you did above for the use of 'Copy' only you will use the command gadget 'Copy As'. The only change will be when it comes time to copy the "dirList" file in the Tutorial: Directory Window you will be given a requestor that will read: Source Directory Tutorial: Source Filename DirList Destination Directory Ram Disk: Enter filename to rename copy of this file A string gadget titled "Filename" will be active with the original name of the file that was selected to copy. Simply add a "2" to the end of the name so that it now reads "DirList2" and press return. The file will be copied using the new destination name "DirList2", the Ram Disk: Directory Window will be updated to show the newly added file. If you change your mind and decide that you wish to keep the name of copy the same as the original simply press return without changing the original name when prompted for the new filename. The file will still be copied and the name will be left unchanged. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 55 You may have notice that the new filename requestor also gave you a gadget titled "Skip". If you select a group of files to be copied and use the 'Copy As' Command Gadget, you are given the choice to copy the file or to skip that file and go to the next selected item. Moving Files The 'Move' command is used for moving files from one directory to another. MegaD performs this function two different ways. If the file is to be moved from one volume to another volume, the file will first be copied to the destination directory, then the original will be deleted from the source directory. If the file is to be moved on the same volume, it will be renamed to the destination directory. This requires a very low overhead, and being so, a large 200,000 byte file will be moved as fast as a 50 byte file. You only have to make the decision of where your moving the file to, MegaD makes the decision of how to move it. To do this we will need two Directory Windows open to the screen. Select the Tutorial: device gadgets and the Ram Disk: device gadget. The two directories will be loaded and place in separate Directory Windows. You should find a text file titled "Prefs.info" in the Tutorial: Directory Window, if not use any other .info files in the Tutorial: Directory Window for this demonstration. Select the "Prefs.info" file, then select the Ram Disk: Directory Window to activate it. As you activated it, the 'Dest'ination gadget of the Ram Disk: Directory Window became selected, showing it to be the destination directory. Now select the Command Gadget 'Move', this is located on the first bank, top row, second from the left. After doing so you will get a requestor that reads: 1 file/s marked for move 0 director/ies marked for move To be moved to 1 directory window/s Continue MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 56 Select 'Yes' and the file will be moved to the Ram Disk: and the two Directory Windows will be updated to show the newly moved file. MegaD will warn you if you are going to write over the top of an old file during a 'Move' just as it did during a 'Copy'. There are ways to turn off the warnings but until you are sure of how MegaD works and what it can do, I suggest that you leave the warnings active. Moving Directories MegaD will also move a directory and its contents, which could contain other directories and files. Select the 'L' directory in the Tutorial: Directory Window. Activate the Ram Disk: Directory Window to make it the destination directory, the 'Dest'ination gadget of that window should be selected. Select 'Move' once again. A request window will open that should read: 0 Files marked for move 1 Directory/ies marked for move To be moved to 1 directory window/s Continue Answer 'Yes' and MegaD will read the contents of the selected directory and move it, once it is finished an exact duplicate of the selected directory will be created in the Ram Disk: MegaD will move groups of selected files and directories to a Directory Window. We are going to move all of the .info files of the Tutorial: volume to a sub-directory on the same volume. If you have been following along you should find a directory on the Tutorial: disk named "My_directory", this is going to be the destination directory for the next move. Drag select all of the files listed in the Tutorial: Directory Window. Working in the Same Volume Before opening the "My_directory" sub- directory of the Tutorial: disk, select the "Lock" gadget of the Tutorial: Directory Window. As described at the start of this tutorial the "Lock" gadget will lock the window to the screen. MegaD is set to allow only one window per volume, the lock gadget MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 57 overrides this allowing another window to open. Now double click the "My_directory" of the Tutorial: Directory Window. The empty "My_directory" Directory Window will open in front of the Tutorial: Directory Window. The 'Dest'ination gadget will be selected on the "My_directory" Directory Window marking this as destination directory. Navigating Through Multiple Directory Windows Lets take a little time out here, This is the first time that we have opened two Directory Window on the same volume. MegaD lets you uses the cursor keys to help navigate through open or previously opened Directory Windows. Left and right cursor moves you from volume to volume. Up and down cursors moves you from directory to directory of the current active volume. If you do not have the Ram Disk: Directory Window opened, open it now so that you may use the four cursor keys to manipulate the open Directory Windows. Cursor left and right changing active volumes. Cursor up and down to move within those volumes. Now cursor back to the Tutorial: Directory Window and then cursor down to activate the "My_directory" Directory Window which in turn should select the 'Dest'ination gadget. Now that the "My_directory" is the destination directory, select the 'Move' Command Gadget and answer the requestors, that will in turn move the files we selected earlier to their new directory. We will need the files back in their original position, so drag select all of the files in "My_directory", and move them back to the Tutorial: Directory Window. Just as with 'Copy' MegaD will not replace a directory with another directory. So if you try to move the "Tutorial:L" directory to the Ram Disk: again it will fail. Move and Rename 'Move As' is 'Move' with the option to change the name of the file or directory while it is being moved. Much like we did with 'Copy' MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 58 and 'Copy As', so you should already know how to do this if you've gone through those two functions. You may want to test it out, but once you are done try to have the files and directories of the Tutorial: volume in the same order they are now. This way we will still be on common ground as we walk through some other functions. Multiple Destination And Source Directories There is no real secret to how this works. If you want to copy files from more than one directory, simply open more than one source windows and mark the items in the windows that you want to work with. If you want to copy files to more than one directory, simply open the directory windows you wish copy to and select the 'Dest'ination gadget on those windows so that they become user defined 'Dest'inations. There are no limits to the number of source, or number of destination windows you can use at one time. 'Copy', 'Copy As', 'Move', 'Move As' and 'Create Dir' work with multiple 'Dest'ination windows. The best way to see this in action is to copy some files from your Tutorial: disk to the Ram Disk:. Follow the below steps to perform a 'Copy' using both multiple Source Directories and using multiple Destination Directories: 1. Open a Directory Window for the Tutorial: disk, Lock that window. Select a few files in this window. (Source directory 1.) 2. 'Double Click' the "Devs" entry of the Tutorial: Directory Window, to open the second source window. Lock this window too. Select a few files in this window also. (Source directory 2.) 3. Open a Directory Window for the "Ram Disk:" disk, 'Lock' and select the 'Dest'ination gadget. (Destination directory 1.) MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Source and Destination Commands 59 4. 'Double Click' the "T" entry of the "Ram Disk:" Directory Window to open a sub-directory window. Select the 'Dest'ination gadget of this window too. (Destination directory 2.) 5. Select the 'Copy' Command Gadget. After the 'Copy' command is finished, the windows will be updated to show the newly copied files. You have just copied files from two directory window into two other directory windows. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 60 Filters and Pattern Matching ============================ Filter Requestor The four functions, 'Sel Patterns', 'Clr Patterns', 'Filters +', and 'Find' use the same requestor. 'Filter -' will be mentioned here because it undoes what 'Filter +' does. The Find requestor changes so that you may define a destination directory and file name to place the list of found items during the search of directory items. All four commands function the same, but produce a different result. Lets examine what they do. Filter + Funtion 'Filter +' will filter in or filter out items in the Directory Window, making the list more manageable. An example of this would be a large directory of graphic files. Some have the extension .iff and others have the extension .gif. A filter could be added to the Directory Window that would hide non .gif files listing only the .gif files at the moment. At places in the list where items have been hidden, lines will be drawn showing that the list being viewed is filtered and is incomplete. Think of this as a fold in the list. Find Function 'Find' will search through whole volumes or selected directories searching for a file or directory. You may know the name of the file that you want but you can not seem to find it. Find will 'Go Deep' into the volume or directory until the file is found or the end of the search area is reached. Find will also make a list of found files that match the select criteria to a specific file that you designate. Select Pattern Function 'Sel Pattern' will select items in open Directory Window that match the patterns set in the filter requestor. Clear Pattern Function 'Clr Pattern' will clear or unselect items in open Directory Window that match the patterns set in the filter requestor. We will use the 'Filter +' and 'Filter -' Command Gadget to demonstrate how this concept works. After you use it for a few MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 61 times, getting the hang of how the others work will be a cinch. This filter requestor may look intimidating, but you need only use and set one filter to use it. You are allowed to use up to five filters at one time, but you only have to defined one to make it work. We will use it on a single directory at first. First open the Tutorial: Directory Window. The 'Dest'ination gadget of that window should be selected so that it is the destination directory. Set the Show menu to show all information of the directory by using the 'Show, All' menu item. Now select the 'Filter +' Command Gadget. This is located on the second (Ctrl) bank, second row, second from the left. The filter requestor will open to the screen. Elements of a Filter Lets take a brief moment and talk about the elements of a filter. The five possible filters are displayed one line at a time. Each filter has four elements to work with. o Type gadget that can be cycled though Name, Size, Date and Protect. o String gadget that lets you type in the filter. o In/Out gadget to filter items in or out. o Activate gadget to turn the filter on or off. In/Out Filter Gadget The In/Out gadget have very general rules as to what it does with the filter. o In Rule. If the items match the filter the items will be displayed in the list. All other items will be hidden from the list. o Out Rule. If the items match the filter the matching items will be hidden in the list. o Out overrides In Rule. The Out Rule will override the In Rule if multiple filters are used. An Out filter, in this case, will only remove the items left to be displayed, MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 62 as set by the In Rule. (This Rule can only occur on multiple filters.) If this is the first time into this requestor you will find that the 'In/Out' and the Activate' gadgets are ghosted for all five filters. You need valid filter information in the string that matches the far left cycle gadget, This far left gadget sets the type of filter. The filter type choices are: Name Works on the filename of the directory items. Size Works on the size of the directory items. Date Works on the Date of the directory items. Protect Works on the protection bits of the directory items. At anytime you may select the 'Filters -' Command Gadget to free up the filters that you have installed on your directories. Filters are remembered on your directory even if you close the Directory Window. Only until the directory is freed from memory by the use of the 'Free Volumes' gadget or the 'Filter -' Command Gadget is selected will the filter be removed. Using Name filters First off, I can't possibly tell you all of the ways to use pattern matches. The new AmigaDOS 2.0 pattern matches are very extensive and powerful. That power is available though MegaD only through the foresight of the programers who wrote the new 2.0 operating system. Should you need more than simple pattern matches you will find the information in books such as 'The AmigaDOS Manual, 3rd Edition' publish by Bantam Computer books. I will limit this discussion to the simple #? pattern match. Cycle the top filter Type gadget to 'Name' if it is not already set that way. In the top string gadget type "S#?" for the filter to use on the Tutorial: Directory Window. The filters are case insensitive so S or s will both match S. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 63 Wildcard Pattern Why #?, AmigaDOS will allow you to use '?' as a wild card in your pattern. On your Tutorial: volume the directory entry "System" should still be there. All of the below patterns would match this entry: "S?stem" "Sy?tem" "Sys?em" "S?????" The last one will match any filename that starts with the character 'S' and is six characters long. The # symbol before the wild card character '?' or any other pattern character is used to repeat the pattern character any number of times including zero times. Now that we know this we can create the "S?????" pattern this way "S#?" This pattern will not only select "System", it will also select : "S" "Shell.info" "System.info" As you can see it is less restrictive and lets you select filenames of different lengths. The #? wild card pattern match needs not be at the end of the pattern, it can be the first characters in the pattern or it can be in between characters. "#?.info" Will select all files that have the .info extension added to it. If I use it on my Tutorial: disk, this is the list of files that are selected by the filter: disk.info Shell.info Expansion.info System.info Monitors.info Trashcan.info My_directory.info Utilities.info Prefs.info WBstartup.info "S#?.info" will select all files that have the .info extension added to and start with the letter 'S'. This is the result if I use this filter: MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 64 Shell.info System.info As you can see we can be very selective in what we want to select by the use of patterns. Through the next few exercises, we will only be using one filter. This way we will not be confused with multiple filters. Later, we will work with multiple filters, but until then, work only with the top most set of filter gadgets. Un-Ghosting The Activate Gadget We are going to create the filter "S#?" in the first filter. Type the characters into the top string gadget and press return. You will notice that the In/Out and the Activate gadget are no longer ghosted. The return on a string gadget tells MegaD that it needs to check to see if a valid filter has been created and if so it will un-ghost the gadgets so that you may select them. Activating a Filter Select that Activate gadget so that this will be an active filter. Now select the use gadget. You will see the Tutorial: Directory Window change to reflect the current filter setting. Only files that start with the letter 'S' are visible now. Using Filter Out Select the Command Gadget 'Filter +' again and change the In/Out cycle gadget to read "Out". Select the 'Use' gadget again. The Directory Window will again change, showing the new filter settings, this time it will show all filenames except those that start with the letter 'S'. Using Size filters Size filters work on the size of files. They do not work on directory sizes. Set MegaD to show the size of the file by checking the menu item 'Show, Size'. A size filter can be specified as 'exact', 'greater than', and 'less than' the numeric size entered into the string gadgets. Less Than Size Filter On the Tutorial: volume are a number of .info files. Some are greater than 1000 bytes in MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 65 size and some are smaller. We are going to create a filter that will specify files smaller than 1000 bytes. Enter "-1000" into the first string gadget of the filter requestor. The minus '-' sign sets the filter to select files less than the size specified. Set the 'In/Out' gadget to in. Set the cycle type to "Size" and make sure that the Activate gadget is selected for this filter. Select the 'Use' gadget and the Tutorial: Directory Window will reset itself to show you the current filter settings. This is the listing I ended up with using this filter: disk.info 388 Shell.info 722 Expansion.info 824 System.info 824 Monitors.info 824 Utilities.info 824 My_directory.info 632 WBstartup.info 824 Greater Than Size Filter Select the 'Filter +' Command Gadget again and change the "-1000" to "+1000". The plus (+) sign sets the size filter to look for files with a size greater than the numeric value found in the string gadget. Once again select the 'Use' gadget to set this filter to the Directory Window. The listing that I came up with looks like this: DirList 4,663 Trashcan.info 1,144 Prefs.info 1,144 Exact Size Filter There is one more type of size filter and that is when you want to match a file by the exact size. As you can see above, I have two files that use 1,144 bytes. If I want to create a filter for those, I would type into the string gadget "1144", you simply omit the Plus or the minus sign to create an exact match. You may have to change the value to fit at least one of the files to create your exact match but you should be getting the idea of how things works. Using Date filters You will have to set MegaD to show the date the file and directories were created or last changed. If your not currently displaying dates in the Directory Window check the menu item 'Show, Date'. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 66 Set the Filter Type Gadget First It is always best to set the filter type gadget to the kind of filter you want before entering the filter. This way MegaD can help you format the filter. A good example of this is the Date filter type. The date filter requires a rather long string of characters in this format: DD-MM-YY HH:MM:SS (Day-Month-Year Hour:Minutes:Seconds) If you set the filter type to Date and enter just the Date of the filter and press return the time will be filled in as zeros. Let test this out. Type in the date like this: 03-05-92 and press return. The time will be added to the end of the filter. 03-05-92 00:00:00 This will tell MegaD to filter with the date of May 3, 1992 12:00 am. Now it is rare that you will be looking for a file on a precise date and time. More than likely you would want to look for files after a date or before a date. To look for files created or modified after a date you would want to add a '+' sign in front of the filter. To look for files created or modified before a date you would want to add the '-' sign in front of the filter. Examples of this are: +03-05-92 00:00:00 would look for files after the date. -03-05-92 00:00:00 would look for files before the date. Now for you to test this you will have to pick a date that has some midway point of the directory list you are looking at. Some files should be older than this date and some files should be newer. The date filter must be entered in this order: Type the number of day first The number of the month second The last two digits of the year last All should be separated by the negative (-) sign. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 67 After Date Filter Add a plus (+) sign to the front of the date to tell the filter to look for newer files, press return. Set the In/Out gadget to In. The Activate gadget for this filter should not be ghosted (disabled) and you should select it if it is not already selected. Now select the 'Use' gadget. You should now only be able to see newer files than the date you typed in the filter in the open Directory Window. Before Date Filter Now reopen the filter requestor and change the + to a - at the first of the filter string and select the 'Use' gadget. You should be able to see older files than the date specified and the other will be filtered out. You can use an exact date to select on. This has minimal use, It is very unlikely that you will have more than one file with the exact same date and time. But if you should have a reason to do so simply omit the (+) or the (-) sign from the front of the filter. Using Protect filters You will need to set MegaD to show the protection bits. If it is not already showing the protection bits check the menu item 'Show, Protect". Set the filter type gadget to Protect. Set the In/Out gadget to In. We will use the Tutorial: volume to test this type of filter on. A good directory for this is the S: directory on it. The startup drawer usually has some items with the s bit set for Script. This is a listing from my "Tutorial:S" directory: BRUtab ----rw-d PCD -s--rwed DPat -s--rwed Shell-startup -s--rwed Ed-startup ----rw-d SPat -s--rwed HDBackup.co ----rw-d Startup-sequence ----rwed Your "Tutorial:S" directory may be different but what we are looking for is a few files with the S bit set for script. If your directory has none with this bit set use the MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 68 'Set Protect' on some similar files in your "Tutorial:S" Directory Window. Protection filters are a little different than other filters in that you have to have a + or a - before the bits you want to test. The + tells the filter that the bit must be set for the match to be true. The - sign before the bit tells the filter that the bit must be clear for the match to be true. Type +s for the filter press return and select the Activate gadget for this filter. Hit the 'Use' gadget. You should now only see the directory entries that have the protection bit s set. My prior listing now looks this way for the "Tutorial:S" Directory Window: DPat -s--rwed Shell-startup -s--rwed PCD -s--rwed SPat -s--rwed As you can see, only the files that have the 's' (Script) bit set are now listed. Some of my files did not have the 'e' (Execute) bit set. We can use this for an example of selecting on un set bits. Reopen the filter requestor again and change the protection filter to "-e" then select the 'Use' gadget. You should now only see the directory entries that have the protection bit 'e' un set. This is my list as a result of this: BRUtab ----rw-d HDBackup.config ----rw-d Ed-startup ----rw-d Enter this for the next filter to test, "+rwed". Press return on this string gadget once done. The filter will expand to "+r +w +e +d". Now use it as a protection filter. Once again this is the list that I have as a result: DPat -s--rwed SPat -s--rwed PCD -s--rwed Startup-sequence ----rwed Shell-startup -s--rwed MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 69 The last example for protection filters we will add "-s" to the last filter so that it now reads "+r +w +e +d -s". This will be the results of this filter: Startup-sequence ----rwed As you have seen, the protection filters are quite versatile and allow a wide variety of ways to select what to view. Mixing Multiple Filters Using multiple filters at one time can become very confusing. (Trust me, I know!) You really can not hurt anything with multiple filters and my theory on the best way to understand them, is to play with them. Things can get really wild when you start mixing filters. Then using the 'In' and 'Out' types complicate things more. The only way to see this in action is to play with it. Filters do not do anything permanent to your directories. They only work on the internal list of MegaD and help MegaD decide what to display and not display for you. Remember the simple rules of In/Out filters while you are doing this. The concept of filters are very unique. As far as I know MegaD is the only directory utility that supports this concept on the Amiga. With multiple filters you may select files that have the pattern match of MegaD#?.c and greater than a certain date. I do this all the time for back ups. A filter for this is set in this manner. Type filter In/Out Activated Name MegaD#?.c In Yes Date -29-05-92 00:00:00 Out Yes This will show all MegaD#?.c files that are greater than May 29, 1992 early morning. Notice that the date is set with a negative (-) sign in the front to select files older than the date specified. The In/Out is set to Out. This way all older files are removed from the list. The following is an output MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 70 from one of my source code directories for MegaD. This is before the above filter was used. Work:lc/com closeup 03-22-92 11:41:24 MegaDPrefs.h 05-27-92 08:12:51 LSE.DAT 03-22-92 11:41:24 MegaDHeader.h 05-27-92 08:15:35 makeProto 03-22-92 11:41:24 H 05-27-92 10:46:50 myoMegaD 03-22-92 11:41:26 MegaDSelWin.c 05-29-92 08:50:58 SASCOPTS 03-22-92 11:41:26 MegaDTools.c 05-29-92 09:04:30 Headerlist.c 04-26-92 05:56:59 MegaDPfFile.c 05-29-92 18:27:24 MegaDTools2.c 05-20-92 18:30:19 setup 05-31-92 05:46:39 MegaDControl.c 05-24-92 07:32:09 MegaDPf.h 05-31-92 06:50:10 Megaddir.c 05-26-92 09:55:37 This is after the above filter was used on the same directory. Work:lc/com MegaDSelWin.c 05-29-92 08:50:58 MegaDPfFile.c 05-29-92 18:27:24 MegaDTools.c 05-29-92 09:04:30 NOTE: The date format for a filter must be DD-MM-YY while my list are displayed MM-DD-YY. This makes a relative mixed list into a very precise list of items that I want to work with for the moment. With a little practice MegaD filters can become a very powerful tool for working with large directories. Global Filter We have not talked about one of the gadgets found in the filter requestor. It is the 'Set to all directories'. Filters normally work only on the 'Dest'ination Directory Window unless you select the 'Set to all directories' gadget in the lower area of the Filter requestor. This creates a global filter that all MegaD Directory Windows will use until the filter is removed with 'Filter -' or a new filter is added to the system. Each time you return to the Filter requestor, you will find it in the same state as the last time, when you selected the 'Use' gadget from it. MegaD keeps this requestor set in MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 71 this manner so that you may quickly reset your last used filter to a new Directory Window. MegaD stores a different set of filters for the three function that use the filter requestor. The three functions are, 'Filters +', 'Sel/Clr Patterns' and 'Find'. Filter - 'Filter -' simply removes all active filters. Unlike the 'Remove' gadget found in the filter requestor, which removes filters from single windows, 'Filter -' will remove any filter attached to any window. As mentioned earlier. 'Find', 'Sel Pattern' and 'Clr Pattern' all use the same requestor for setup. Now that you have a good start on what filters are to MegaD we can get in to the subtitle different of 'Find', 'Sel Pattern' and 'Clr Pattern'. Find 'Find' will search through whole volumes or selected directories searching for a file or directory. A good reason for this is, you may know the name of the file that you want, but you can not seem to find it. Find will 'Go Deep' into the selected volume or directories until the file is found or the end of the search area is reached. Find List Of Directory Items Find will also make a list of found files that match the selected criteria to a specific file that you designate. This option lets you create lists of like items found in more than one directory. You could be looking for all files that end with the .lha extension. If so you would set a name filter "#?.lha" and fill in the "Path and filename for items" string gadget found at the bottom of the filter requestor for 'Find'. You should supply a full path and name for this file such as "Ram Disk:findList". If you just enter "findList" the file will be created in the same directory as MegaD. Once the directories are searched and item/s were found to match the filter, MegaD will load the created file and display it in a Text Window. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Filters, Patterns and Find 72 Select By Pattern This is a very simple function. 'Sel Pattern' will search the current destination directory window. When it finds a file (or directory) that matches the pattern, MegaD will select (highlight) that file/directory. The search will then continue until all open windows have been searched. 'Sel Pattern' also has the capability to work on all open windows (rather than just the current destination window). To enable this feature, merely select the 'Set to all directories' gadget in the lower area of the Filter requestor. Clear By Pattern 'Clr Pattern' will clear or unselect items in open Directory Window that match the patterns set in the filter requestor. This works identically as 'Sel Pattern' except it clears the directory items that match the filter. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 73 AutoBoots ========= AutoBoots are unique, their purpose is to let you to train MegaD to work with types of data files that it knows nothing about. MegaD only knows how to handle a double click on three types of files from default. They are: 1. Icon file (.info) Emulates Workbench. If it is a project icon it will look for a tool type. If it is a drawer icon it will load the directory into a Directory Window. If it is a tool icon it will ask if you want to run the program file associated with it. 2. Text file. It will attempt to load it and place it into a Text Window. 3. Executable file. It will bring up a Program Control Window that can be set in a variety of ways. This Program Control Window is an integral part of AutoBoots, Menu Sets and User gadgets. It allows you execute an external program from within MegaD and offers many options on just how it should be done. This will be explained during this discussion on AutoBoots. This is rather limiting when you consider the wide variety of data files that are possible on the Amiga. Just to name a few, Graphics, Sounds, Music, Mod, Animations... To even attempt to list all possible data files would be a major job, and once the list was complete someone would write a new program that would create a new type of data file making the list incomplete. For this same reason MegaD remains and will remain to be a very naive program. It knows very little about the outside world. It is up to you to teach MegaD how it should react when a data file is double clicked. This requires you to know a little about your own system. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 74 Know Your System You need to be able to answer this question. "What data files on your system work with what programs on your system?" If you have a word processor, what files did that word processor create?. If you have a program that will display or create graphic files, what graphic files can it handle? If you have a program the will play a sound file, what sound files can it handle? Add AutoBoot Command The facility that you use to teach it with is the 'Add AutoBoot' command. 'Add AutoBoot' requires you to select one program file and at least Two data files that the program file can handle. The more data files that are selected the better chance that MegaD will always make the correct choice as to which program file to match it to when the data file is double clicked. I am going to base this piece of the tutorial on an assumption, I am going to assume that you have and have used Deluxe Paint IV. The program name for this is DPaint and from here on out that is the name that I will refer to it with. If you don't have DPaint you will have to improvise and use some other type of program that creates and uses data files, just remember that all that is really required to create an AutoBoot definition is one program file and at least two data files that the program file knows how to use. Selecting The Executable Open a Directory Window that contains the program file DPaint and select it. Select the 'Lock' gadget of this Directory Window, this will prevent it from closing while we open another directory that contains the data files. Selecting The Data Files If your data files are stored with the program file drag select some of them, if not, open a Directory Window that contains the data files, and drag select some of them. Add AutoBoot Skips Icon Files Do not worry about the icon files that may has been selected with the data files, MegaD MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 75 will ignore them through the Add AutoBoot process. Now select the 'ABoot Add' Command Gadget. This gadget is located on the third (shifted) bank of Command Gadget, forth row, far Left. MegaD will match the program file to the selected data files, by matching common data found at the first of each data file. Possible Uses of File Extension If common data can't be found yet each selected data file had a common extension such as ".lha", it will use the extension of the filenames to match the files with. If everything goes as planed, a Program Control Window will open that will let you set MegaD to run the program file and the specific actions for MegaD to perform while it is running the program. The next few pages may be difficult to comprehend; however, I think I should introduce you to the autoboot requestor before I continue leading you through the DPaint autoboot setup. In the meanwhile, please bear with me. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Auto Boot Program Control Window 76 Program Control Window ====================== Now that the Program Control Window is opened, we can discuss all of the settings and string gadgets found in it. You will find this discussion useful later on when we discuss Menu Sets, and User Gadgets, they both use the Program Control Window for part of their setup in the same way the AutoBoots are set. Anatomy Of The Program Control Window The Program Control Window contained nine check gadgets, Two cycle gadgets, six string gadgets and two exit gadgets, Use and Cancel. Check Gadgets The check gadgets that have an '*' in front of the title of the gadget has no control over an AutoBoot definition during the double click of a file. But they can be set for later use. You will be able to place a defined AutoBoot on one or more of the keypad gadgets once it is defined Skip selected directories If checked, ignores selected directories in the directory window during the call. Very few programs can use a selected directory. Some archiving program will compress all files and recreate the directory once un- compressed. Skip selected files: If checked, ignores selected files in the directory window during the call. This is rarely checked. Most programs that you set up will want selected files to work on from open directory windows. Work without selected items: If checked, MegaD will call the program even if nothing is selected in the directory window during the call. This is useful when creating a program control that will call a program that does not use a data file, such as a terminal program. Skip .info files: If checked, ignores selected .info files in the directory window during the call. Very MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Auto Boot Program Control Window 77 few programs work on icon files. Usually this will be checked. Combine all selected on one line: Some programs can accept multiple data files at startup. MegaD launches programs in two basic ways. CLI command line, or as a Workbench task. This works closely with the cycle gadget below that cycles though the different execute modes. If checked: And this is a "Multitasking Workbench (NO I/0)" (see below) type call. All selected items that get past the above criteria will be sent to the called program as a group of Workbench arguments. Some programs do not deal with multiple arguments and will ignore all but the first argument and some times even the first argument will be ignored. And this is not a "Multitasking Workbench (NO I/O)" the selected information will be assembled into a CLI (Command Line Interface) command. A CLI command can be about 255 characters long. If all of the selected items can not be place into one line, MegaD will create extra lines and recall the program until all selected items have been fed to the program. (See Command Lines and Program control below for more information.) Combine all selected on one line: (continued) If not checked: And this is a "Multitasking Workbench (NO I/0)" type call. All selected items that get past the above criteria will be fed to the called program one at a time. Each time the called program returns, the program will be re-called and given the next selected item. This mode has a high overhead due to the fact that the program must be reloaded for each call. And this is not a "Multitasking Workbench (NO I/O)" the selected information will be assembled into a CLI (Command Line Interface) MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Auto Boot Program Control Window 78 command. MegaD will create a command line for each selected item and recall the program until all selected items have been fed to the program. Workbench screen to front at start If checked, MegaD will move the Workbench screen to the front position among all other screens running on the system at the same time MegaD launches the program. MegaD screen to front at end If checked, MegaD will move the MegaD screen to the front position among all other screens running on the system after the launched program ends. Reload current directory at end If checked, MegaD will require that at least one destination window is available on the screen. Once the called program returns, MegaD will reload the current directory and re-display the information in this destination window. If the destination window was closed during the process it will be reopened. Forced Destination 'Reload current directory at end' also forces the destination window to become the Current Directory for the called program. This is useful for programs that un-archive information to such directories. If 'Reload current directory at end' is not check the called program is given it's own home directory as it's current directory, and no directory is reloaded once the launched program finishes. Query for destination filename If checked, MegaD will require that at least one destination window is available on the screen. MegaD will then open a requestor for you to input the filename to be used in this directory. This is useful for a program that requires a destination file name such as archivers. (See: Command Lines and Program control below for more information.) Screen control Cycle gadget MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Auto Boot Program Control Window 79 The Screen control only effects which screen the console window is placed for Non- Workbench executed programs. Place Program on Workbench Screen: Place the console window for the program on Workbench screen. Place Program on MegaD Screen: Place the console window for the program on MegaD screen. Execute type cycle gadget Multitasking execute: MegaD spawns a simple task to control the called program. This task executes the command line or lines that were created by the program control. If more than one command line was created for this call it will continue executing each line until the job is completed. Multitasking Execute W/Hold: MegaD spawns a simple task to control the called program. This task executes the command line or lines that were created by the program control. If more than one command line was created for this call the task will wait for a return or the input of the letter 'Q' for quit. If the letter 'Q' is not entered it will continue calling each line until the job is completed. Multitasking Workbench (NO I/0): MegaD spawns the program as a Workbench task. No command line is created. Only Workbench arguments are passed to the called program. Input and Output channels are not supplied, so DO NOT use this call with programs that are CLI type programs. The best way to know if this will work is if the program that you are setting up has an icon file (.info). Program Control Window, String Gadgets. Please See: Command Lines and Program control below for more information about how the strings are assembled for a command line. Title String Gadget You define a unique title for each program control. This title should be one that will MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Auto Boot Program Control Window 80 remind yourself what the program control function is and will do. This title must be unique from all other program controls titles. Though the room for the title is large, it is best to keep them to 12 characters or less. This way the title will be completely visible if the program control is attach to a keypad gadget. Path and Program Name String Gadget This should contain the complete path and filename of the executable file for this Program Control. It can be verified by the "Verify Title & Path/name" gadget at the top of the window. Flags to add after Program Name: If the program uses special information to tell what to do, usually in the form of flags [-f -a]. This is usually the best place for them. Text to append to end of command line: After the command line is fully assembled, this information is added to the end. Redirect Output to a file or device: If you under stand AmigaDos redirection this is the output filename for the redirection. A very common one is PRT: to force the output information to be sent to the printer. Accept Input From a file or device: This is a very rare case and unless you are very sure of what you are doing you should not use this. What happens is this. If the called program requires any information from the console window it will instead be given what ever information is found in the input file. Both types of redirection are complex issues and if you need more information consult your AmigaDos manuals. Preventing the Console Window From Opening NOTE: Under OS 2.0 you can prevent the console window from opening by setting both 'Accept Input from a file or device' and 'Redirect Output to a file or device' to "NIL:". MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Auto Boot Program Control Window 81 Command Lines and Program Controls Working with AmigaDos and CLI command lines some times requires that full sentences be created to tell the program that is to be called what to do. A very common type of a command that might be used would be this line. LhArc a "Ram Disk:archive" "My Disk:My Data File" This line would call the program LhArc with the flag of 'a' and two filenames following. When MegaD creates this line for you it does a couple of other things to it. It also adds standard redirection symbols to it so that the program can work in a supplied console window. When MegaD creates this line it looks like this. LhArc >* <* a "Ram Disk:archive" "My Disk:My Data File" MegaD uses all of the information in the string gadgets of the program control and possibly information from selected files in directory window to piece together the command line. The information is patched together with spaces between the information in this order. [Path and Program Name] >[Redirect Output to a file or device] <[Accept Input From a file or device] [Flags to add after Program Name] [Query for destination filename] [complete filenames of selected files] [Text to append to the end of the Command Line] Sorry I had to put you through all of that, But all of it needed to be explained. I will take you through setting up Program Control in a number of different ways. If you can remember that, far back we started this discussion by starting to set up an AutoBoot Program Control for DPaint, that Program Control Window should still be open at the moment. We will move back to setting the DPaint AutoBoot up. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 82 Back To Adding Auto Boots ========================= Setting AutoBoots As Command Gadgets You could select 'Use' at this point and the AutoBoot would be ready to use. But we will define this Program Control to the attributes that best suit DPaint. One of the nice things about this, is the AutoBoot can later be attached to one of the keypad gadgets so you could select a graphic file from a MegaD Directory Window and then select the DPaint keypad gadget. This action would launch DPaint and load the selected graphic file. I always set the AutoBoot Program Control up so that if I want they can be added to a keypad. We will go though the steps to do so. As you will see, the best way to set up a Program Control is to ask yourself "Do I need this attribute to run this program?" The first question you should answer right now is "How should I run this program?" As a Workbench task or as an executed CLI command line? And if it is an executed CLI command line, should the console window that it is run from, wait for a return to close. DPaint will run from the Workbench. We know this because it has a .info icon file that is used with the Workbench. Using the Workbench to launch a program has the lowest overhead, or put another way, it uses less memory. Set the execute type gadget to "Multitasking Workbench (NO I/O)" You will notice that the two bottom check gadgets are ghosted, also the last four string gadgets have become ghosted. These attributes can not be used with the Workbench. The next question is "Will DPaint work with a directory as a tool? The answer is no. You can not give DPaint a directory as a workbench argument and have it know what to do with it. So you will check the "Skip selected directories." MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 83 Will DPaint work with a file? Yes, it will load most any IFF graphic file. We will not check the "Skip selected files" attribute. Will DPaint work without any data files. Yes, you can start up DPaint with out a file and start working within DPaint from scratch. We will check the "Work without selected items" attribute. Will DPaint use an .info icon file? No, it will not know what to do with it. We will check the "Skip .info files" attribute Will DPaint work on multiple data files at one time. Unfortunately it will not. If you send DPaint more than one Workbench argument it will ignore all but the first one. This means if you were to drag select a group of graphics files and launch DPaint with this attribute set it will load the first selected item and ignore all the others. We will not select the "Combine all selected on one line" attribute. Will DPaint open on the Workbench screen? No, DPaint will open it's own screen, and being so, we will not need to shuffle the screens around to see the program. We will not check the "Workbench screen to front at start" And for the same reason will not check the "MegaD screen to front at end" attribute. Now look over to the right side of the window. The top two string gadgets are the only ones we can enter information into and they are both filled. The Title has "DPaint" in it. Path and Program name has the full path and name that you would use to find and run this program. This is my path for it: "Work:Paint/DPaint", yours will be different to match the way DPaint is accessed on your system. Both are filled in properly and we can leave them as they are. Now that we have everything set, select the MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 84 'Use' gadget. You should receive a message reading: This AutoBoot has been added To keep, use Save Preferences press 'Continue'. The AutoBoot is now available for use on your system. Using an AutoBoot To use the AutoBoot, all you will need to do is double click a file that it has been trained to recognize. DPaint will be launched and the double clicked file will be loaded by DPaint. Test this out and then quit DPaint so that we can go on to the next feature of using AutoBoots. Just as a reminder, there is a menu item in the Option menu that will disable this feature of MegaD. It is the Option, Activate AutoBoot. If you un-check this, the testing of double click of files for data type will be deactivated. Using an AutoBoot As A Command Gadget We have prepared this AutoBoot so that it can be attached to the keypad. Lets do this now. This task is quite simple to perform. In the Project menu you will find the menu item Keypads... Select this item. Set Keypads Window A window will open that is for attaching commands to the keypad gadgets. The upper area has 42 gadgets in a 6 X 7 grid. This set of gadget are the source gadgets. They are where you will get the commands that you want to place in your keypad. Destination Gadgets The keypad gadgets are in the lower area of this window aligned to the right side of the window. The keypad gadget area is the destination area of this window. Any one gadget in each area can be selected. As soon as one gadget is selected in both areas the keypad gadget will changed to the selected source item. You will find two cycle gadgets, One is for pages of source information, the other is to select the type of source information to MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 85 transfer or to work on. The types to work on are Builtin, Menu Sets, AutoBoots and User Gadgets. Below this set of cycle gadgets are gadgets labeled Add, Delete, Modify. By selecting a Menu Set, AutoBoot, or User Gadget and then selecting the Modify gadget you can edit how a program control will function. By selecting a keypad gadget and then modify, you can change the title and color of the keypad gadget. You will need to cycle the source type to AutoBoots. Once doing so you will see the 'DPaint" AutoBoot that we just created. Select the 'A' 'Shift gadget' on the keypad. This will position it to a completely blank bank of Command Gadgets. Select the upper right keypad gadget, it will stay selected after you move the mouse away from it. Select the source gadget 'DPaint', the information will be copied to the selected keypad gadget. Now select the 'Use' gadget. The Set Keypad window will close. Now select the 'A' gadget in the Control Window to shift the Command Gadget to the forth bank. You will find the 'DPaint' gadget you just place there. Be sure that no Directory Window items are selected and select the 'DPaint' Command Gadgets. DPaint will be launched without a data file to load, (this is why we made sure that none of the Directory Window had selected items in them.) After doing this, Quit DPaint. Now select a data file in a Directory Window that you know will work with DPaint, then select the 'DPaint' Command Gadget once again. DPaint will be launched and this time it will have a data file to load and display. I took you on a number of detours to explain how to add an AutoBoot to MegaD. We will add a few more AutoBoots, the first one will work on the same types of graphic data files. I am going to demonstrate how MegaD handles situations where multiple AutoBoots are created for the same type of data file. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 86 The other one will work with an archiving utility that needs a console window. There are many programs out there that will display graphic files on the Amiga. They do not include editing functions or ways to modify the graphic file and save it, they are usually fairly small, this gives them the plus that they can be loaded quicker to preview a graphic file than a full blown paint utility. A very good graphic viewer comes with the new 2.0 operating system. This program is named "Display" and you can find it in the utilities drawer of the Workbench. If your not using 2.0 and do not have Display then you will have to find another utility that will work on your system that will display graphics files. A very good choice for this is "Mostra" by Sebastiano Vigna. Ether program that you use, you should be familiar with it before running it. If you have never used "Display" or "Mostra", you should read the documentation that comes with them, before creating AutoBoots to work with them. This holds true for any program that you wish to run, if it be from within MegaD or from the Workbench or from the CLI. Save Your Work As you have seen, MegaD will remind you after a new AutoBoot definition is created, to save your preference file. The reason, so you will not lose your work. Creating an AutoBoot is a risky business. It is possible that you may define an AutoBoot to use the Workbench type execute, only to find that when you test it out, it crashes because the program needed input and output channels. It is possible that the program is not compatible with the way MegaD launches programs, though I have yet to find one, I sure they exist. For these reason, save your preferences file by the use of the 'Project, Save Preferences' menu or the Command Gadget, 'Save Defaults'. The previous paragraph hold true for the rest of the Tutorial. Up till now, we have worked with the default settings of MegaD. We are MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 87 now modifying MegaD to our needs and wants. All of the changes that we have done and all of the changes the we will do later can be saved, and should be. Select "Display" in the Utilities Directory Window and lock that window so that it will not close. Open the Directory Window to the same graphic files that you used to set the AutoBoot for DPaint and select some of the graphic files. Select the 'ABoot Add' Command Gadgets. The Program Control Window will open. Perform the next few settings. 1. Check Skip selected directories. 2. Check Skip .info files 3. Check Combine all selected on one line 4. Cycle Execute type to Workbench (NO I/O) Note: This is all that needed to be done to set up ether Mostra or Display. If your not sure why we set the attributes this way look back at the text that describe the attributes of Program Controls for your answers. 5. Select the 'Use' gadget. Multiple AutoBoot Window Now double click one of the graphic files, A Multiple AutoBoots window will open. It will gives you the choice of which program to use with this double clicked data file. Two of the twenty gadgets in this window displays the possible choices for programs that can be used with this file, Display and DPaint. Select the Display gadget. The double clicked file will be handed to the Display program as a Workbench argument, in turn it will load the graphic file and display it. Add Display Command Gadget Select the Keypads menu item in the Project menu. Add this AutoBoot to the Keypad. Remember the Forth (Alt) bank is mostly empty, this will be a common bank to add commands while your getting used to MegaD. Add the Display AutoBoot to any of the blank keypad gadgets. Once done select the 'Use' gadget. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 88 Remember that we selected the 'Combine all selected on one line' attribute for the Display AutoBoot. Now that it is attached to a keypad gadget we can test this feature of the Program Control. Select a few of the graphic files in a Directory Window and then select the new 'Display' keypad command. Display will load and run, it will load each of the graphic files one at a time for you to see them. By pressing the Space Bar the program Display will switch to the next selected graphic. Lets move on to the next and final AutoBoot that we will add. You will need to have one of many archiving programs available for the Amiga computer. Archiving programs are used to compress a file or a group of files for storage or transmission over telecommunication lines. Two very popular programs of this type are LhArc and LhA. You will also need to have a few files that have been created with the archiving programs. These files usually end with an extension. LhArc files end with .lzh and LhA files end with .lha. Adding Archive List Command Open a Directory Window that has the archiving program and select it and 'Lock" the window. Open a window that has some of the data files that match the archiving program, remember that you need at least two data files selected for Add AutoBoot. After doing so select the 'ABoot Add' Command Gadgets. MegaD will look though the selected files for common data, the common data it will find will be the data files all have the same extension. It will open a request window that will read: Use extension lha to match data file to executable? Answer yes to this requestor. The Program Control Window will open so that you can set up this AutoBoot. We want this one to list the contents of the archive file to a console window and it should hold the console window open until we are done reading MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 89 it. Here are the attributes that we will set: 1. Check Skip selected directories 2. Check Skip .info files 3. Set execute to 'Multitasking Execute W/Hold" 4. Add " list" behind the title so that it will be more descriptive of it's task. It could read "LhA List" or "LhArc List". 5. Type a lower case 'l' in the 'Flags to add after Program Name' string gadget. This flag tell LhArc and LhA to list the contents of the archive file. 6. Select the 'Use' gadget. You can now double click any of the archive files that was created with the archiving program and the contents will be listed into a console window. The window will wait for a return key press to close. We Are the Teachers To summarize what has just happened, we have taught MegaD how to handle graphic and archived files. An ability that it does not have on it's own. By training MegaD on what program to call for certain types of data files we have made MegaD a little more useful while navigating around our file systems. We have also added the AutoBoots to keypad gadgets so that new commands are available to work on selected items in Directory Windows. We can even set keypad gadgets so that we can call our favorite programs making MegaD a very powerful tool manager. Now that we have created a few AutoBoots we can discuss how to select and clear items in open Directory Windows by the use of "Sel ABoot" and 'Clr ABoot'. This is a unique feature of MegaD, instead of selecting files by name or file attributes you select it by the actual contents of the file. This has a very high overhead when you use it, MegaD actually reads the first few bytes of each file found in each open Directory Window to decide if the file will match the AutoBoot. But at times it may be the only way you can tell a word processor file from a text file in a mixed directory. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 AutoBoots 90 You could use this function of MegaD to clean up a directory of mixed items. Select the files by the AutoBoot criteria and them move all of those files to a specific directory that is to be dedicated to only those types of files. It becomes a very powerful reorganization tool. Open one Directory Window that has some data files of the same type that was used to create an AutoBoot. Remember, MegaD will look into all open Directory Window so it is best to have only the Directory Window open that you want this to happen in. Select the "Sel ABoot" Command Gadget that is found on the first bank of the Command Gadget, third row, far right. MegaD will open a window with all of the available AutoBoot definitions that have been created thus far. Select/Clear AutoBoot Window This window functions much like a Directory Window, you can single select or drag select AutoBoot definitions. You can actually test by multiple AutoBoots, but for our purpose we will select by only one. Once you have selected the AutoBoot that you want to test the files by, close the window by using the window close gadget of this window. MegaD will read the first few bytes of each files and if the file is of the same type the AutoBoot was trained to recognize it will select the item. "Clr ABoot" will work exactly the same only it will clear the data files that matches the AutoBoot selected for the function. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 User Gadgets 91 User Gadgets ============ User Gadgets are program controls, much like AutoBoots, that you define so that you can launch other programs from keypad command gadgets. You've seen what it takes to add an AutoBoot to MegaD and then attach it to a keypad gadgets. Why User Gadgets? The advantage of User Gadgets is that you do not need to have data files to create them. Take JrComm, a very popular telecommunication program, it does not have to have a data file to run. But JrComm would be a good program to attach to the keypad for quick access while MegaD is running. I am assuming that you made it through the Add AutoBoots and that you were able to unsuccessfully add the AutoBoots to your Keypad Command Gadget. Unless a User Gadget is accessible from the keypad, it is useless I will be adding JrComm to my keypad, you may add JrComm if you have it, or any other program that you would like to have quick access to. MegaD will launch any program you want it too. Simply use the program you wish to attach in place of my references to JrComm. Adding User Gadgets User Gadgets are added by selecting the menu item Project, Keypads... The Set Keypads window will open. Cycle the command type gadget to "User Gadgets". The Add gadget will become un-ghosted. Select this gadget, the window will change to "User Gadget, Program Control". User Gadget Program Control This window should be very familiar to you. We will set this up to launch a program that will ignore all selected items in the directory windows and launch the program found in the "Path and Program name" string gadget. Take the following steps: 1. Check 'Skip selected directories' MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 User Gadgets 92 2. Check 'Skip selected files' 3. Check 'Work without select items' 4. Check 'Skip .info files' 5. Set execute type to "Multitasking Workbench (NO I/O)" Note: if the program you are setting up requires input and output channels (CLI type), set this to "Multitasking Execute". You will crash the system launching a CLI program as a Workbench task. 6. Enter "JrComm" into the Title string gadget 7. Enter "JrComm:Jr-Comm" into the Path and program name string gadget. You will have to know the full path to the program you are adding as a User Gadget. Verify Title And Path/Name There is a gadget that we have not discussed yet. It is found in the upper right hand corner of the program Control Window. The "Verify Title & Path/name" gadget is for testing the Title to be sure that it is unique from all other Program Control titles. And for making sure that the Path and Program name was entered correctly. Select this gadget once, If errors are found you will be notified by a message window describing the problems. If no problems are found you will receive the message: "Title & Path/name are good" If any errors were found, correct them and retest the verify. When your information Verifies select the 'Use' gadget. You will be returned to the Set Keypad window. Find the new User Gadget JrComm in the source area and copy it to one of the keypad gadgets, preferably a blank one. Now select the 'Use' gadget of the Set Keypads window. You will now be able to launch the program from the keypad Command Gadget in the Control Window. Select this to see if it works properly. JrComm should start and run from the selection of that command gadget. Current Directories The next User Gadget that we will add is going to be useless other than it will demonstrate a feature of MegaD Program MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 User Gadgets 93 Control that is not readily apparent. This works with the Reload current directory at end attribute. This attribute does two things. One, as it describes, after ending it reloads the directory that was active at the time the program was run. Two, it forces the Active Directory of MegaD to become the launched program current directory. The Active Directory of MegaD is listed in the text area of the Control Window. Another Reason to Switch to Workbench 2.0 A note to Workbench 1.3 users. This feature does not work correctly, In fact it does not work at all. The current directory usually becomes the boot disk. I have no plans to make this work under 1.3. But if your not Using 2.0 yet you should be. It is well worth the upgrade fee. When You Need A Current Directory At what times would you want a directory to become the current directory? Any time you have a program that creates a file that will be written to the current directory. Archive programs are known for this feature, before archiving a set of files, you should always CD (change directory) to the directory that you wish the archive to be created in. MegaD does this automaticly for you when you use the Reload current directory at end attribute. A program that will help show this in action is the "Dir" command found in your C: directory. Dir will list the current directory if it is entered on a CLI without any arguments. The current directory will be listed in the CLI window. Lets create a User Gadget that will do this for us. Dir User Gadget Select the "Project, Keypads..." menu item. Cycle command type to 'User Gadgets' and select the Add gadget. The Program Control Window will open so that a new User Gadget can be created. Set the following attributes: 1. Check 'Skip selected files' 2. Check 'Work without selected items' MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 User Gadgets 94 3. Check 'Skip .info files' 4. Check 'Reload current directory at end' 5. Cycle Execute type to 'Multitasking Execute W/Hold'. (Dir needs input and output channels.) 6. Enter "Dir" into the Title string gadget. 7. Enter "C:Dir" into the Path and Program Name string gadget. 8. Verify the Title, Path and Program name. 9. Select Use. The Set Keypad window will reopen. You will now be able to copy the new 'Dir' User Gadget to one of your keypads gadgets. Once copied, select the 'Use' gadget and the Set Keypads window will close. Testing the Reload/ Current Directory You will now be able to access the new 'Dir' command from your Keypad Command Gadgets. Open a Directory Window to a directory that has a few items visible in it, the 'Dest'ination gadget should be auto selected. Select the new 'Dir' Command Gadgets. A console window will open, the directory will be read and listed into the console window as if you had CD to that directory in a CLI window and then typed "Dir". Press the return key to close this console window. Open a few other Directory Window and test the 'Dir' command as new 'Dest'ination Directories are selected. Each time the launched program will be given the MegaD Active Directory as its current directory. Modify or Delete Program Controls As mentioned, this is a useless command. MegaD is already displaying the directory and a list in a console window is of very little use. There is a way to modify or delete User Gadget. Select the menu item "Project, Keypads..." again. If the command type is not set to User Gadgets, cycle it to it. You will be able to select the 'Dir' User Gadget that you have just created. Select it and then select the 'Modify' gadget found in the lower left spot of the Set Keypad window. If you wanted you could modify this Program MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 User Gadgets 95 Control. I just brought you to this point so that you can see how to modify a Program Control when it is needed. You can modify all of the different types of Program Control from the Set Keypad window, this is one of it's major functions. You can access Auto Boots, User Gadgets and Menu Sets from this point. Select the Cancel gadget. We are going to delete the 'Dir' User Gadget. Select the 'Dir' User Gadget in the source area, then select the 'Delete' gadget found just above the 'Modify' gadget in the lower left section of the window. A requestor will open that reads: Cancel will not restore deleted program controls Continue This is warning you that there will be no way to retrieve this Program Control later. Select Yes and the User Gadget 'Dir' will disappear from both the Source area and the place that it was copied to your keypad Command Gadgets. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menu Sets 96 Menu Sets ========= Menu sets are user defined menus. You access them in the 'Utilities' menu. They take up the first five items in this menu. For this reason they are setup in groups of five. A user defined menu can do anything that a User Gadget can do. The only real difference is that you access it from the menu instead of the Control Window. Predefined Menu Sets There are three predefined menu sets that come at default. They are Zoo, Arc and LhArc. To access the Menu Set you can use the menu "Project, Set Preferences..." We were in this window once before to set the Device Gadgets up. We will be concentrating on the upper area this time, it is dedicated to the Menu Sets. You will see that the five menus of a Menu Set are grouped line by line. Each line is titled Menu 1 through Menu 5. To the far right of each line is a gadget titled Control..., select any one of these gadgets. Menu Set Program Control This window should be getting fairly familiar by now, The Program Control Window. When modifying a Menu Set, it is best to do it from within the Program Control Window. Only a few of the attributes can be changed by the four string gadgets that were in the previous window. The four are "Title", "Path and Program name", "Flags to add after Program Name" and Text to append to end of Command Line". Select the Cancel gadget and we will return to the Preferences window. Selecting Menu Sets The first three gadget at the top of the window are titled 'Zoo', 'Arc' and 'LhArc'. As you can see the default Menu Sets have been set up to work with archiving programs. 'Zoo' and 'Arc' are both rather outdated but 'LhArc' is still a very widely used program. Select the three gadgets one at a time and watch what they do. They change the information to the corresponding default menu set. Next/Previous MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menu Sets 97 Step Gadgets Just to the right of those three gadget you will find two that will allow you to step through the Menu Sets one after the other forward or backward. Play with the 'Next' and the 'Prev' gadgets watching how they control the information that you can change and modify. Add, Delete Menu Set Gadgets Finally the last two gadgets are for adding new Menu Sets. The first three default sets can not be deleted but the can be modified to anything you would like them to be. There is a new and popular archiving utility available now that is in wide use in the Amiga community. It is LhA. LhA is written by Stefan Boberg and is a Shareware offering that can be found on most BBS (Builtin Board Systems). I will be showing you how to set LhA as a newly Added Menu Sets. Adding A Menu Set Select the 'Add' gadget of the Preferences window, a requestor will be opened that reads: You will need to successfully define all five menu Sets This is to remind you that you will need to create all five menus that create one Menu Sets. Select Yes, All of the string gadgets will be cleared and ready for new information. Creating A New Menu Set As mentioned it is best to create the Menu Sets from within the Program Control Window. Select the 'Control...' gadget for Menu 1. The Program Control Window will open. Making A Pack Menu We are going to set this Menu Sets so that we can archive selected files into a single file that will be written to the current Active Window of MegaD. Set the following attributes: 1. Check 'Combine all selected on one line' 2. Check 'Reload current directory at end' (remember that this CDs to the Active Directory) 3. Check 'Query for destination filename' This attribute tell MegaD to open a MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menu Sets 98 request window for a file name. the filename will be for the name to create the archive file as. 4. Set execute type to 'Multitasking Execute' 5. Enter "LhA Pack" into the Title String gadget. 6. Enter "C:LhA" into the Path and Program name string gadget. This assumes that your LhA utility is found in your C: directory. 7. Enter "a" into the Flags to add after Program Name string gadget. This flag tell LhA to add files to the Archive file. 8. Test the information by selecting the Verify.. gadget at the top of the window. If the Path or title needs to be changed, do so. 9. Select the 'Use' gadget. You will see the information that you have entered show up in the first line for Menu 1. Making A UnPack Menu Set We will set Menu 2 to unpack the archive. Select the 'Control...' gadget for Menu 2 and set it in the following manner: 1. Check 'Skip selected directories' 2. Check 'Skip .info files' 3. Check 'Reload current directory at end' 4. Be sure execute type is Multitasking Execute 5. Enter "LhA UnPack" in the Title string gadget. 6. Enter "C:LhA" in the Path and program name. 7. Enter "e" into the Flags to add after Program Name string gadget. This tell LhA to extract the files from the selected archives. 8. Verify the Title, Path and Program name. 9. Select the 'Use' gadget. We now have two of the five done to create one full Menu Sets. Making A List Menu Menu 3 will be set to list an archive file. Select the "Control..." gadget for Menu 3 and set the Program Control to: MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menu Sets 99 1. Check 'Skip selected directories' 2. Check 'Skip .info files' 3. Be sure execute type is 'Multitasking Execute W/Hold' 4. Enter "LhA List" into the Title string gadget. 5. Enter "C:LhA" into the Path and Program name string gadget. 6. Enter "l" into the Flags to add after Program Name string gadget. This tell LhA to list the selected archive files. 7. Verify the Title, Path and program name. 8. Select Use. Three Menu Sets down and two to go. Making A Test Menu The next Menu Sets we will set will test the validity of an archive file. Select the "Control..." gadget for Menu 4 and set the Program Control in the following way: 1. Check 'Skip selected directories' 2. Check 'Skip .info files' 3. Set execute type to 'Multitasking Execute W/Hold' 4. Enter "LhA Test" into the Title string gadget. 5. Enter "C:LhA" into the Path and Program name string Gadget. 6. Enter "t" into the Flags to add after Program Name. 7. Verify the Title and Path/name. 8. Select the "Use" Gadget. Four down one and the last to go. Making A Recursive Menu We will add a command that will allow us to archive directories and all of its contents, this will include sub directories and files. Select the "Control..." gadget for Menu 5 and fill the Program Control in with the following attributes: 1. Check 'Reload current directory at end' 2. Check 'Query for destination filename' 3. Set execute type to 'Multitasking Execute' 4. Enter "LhA Recursive" into the Title string gadget MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menu Sets 100 5. Enter "C:LhA" into the Path and Program name string gadget 6. Enter "-r a" into the Flags to add after Program name string gadget. This tells LhA to Recursively add files found in selected directories. 7. Verify the Title, Path an Program Name. 8. Select the 'Use' gadget. We have successfully set all five menus sets. Save Your Work We have put quite a bit of work into this so to close the Preferences window we will use the Save Gadget. This will save the preferences file for MegaD and close the window. I tend to place archiving utilities in the utilities menu but any programs that you wish can be added here. They do not need to be like programs but you can organize programs into groups that you use for certain task. You can now access the new menu from the Utilities menu. The utilities menu has provisions to change the current active Menu Sets. You can choose Menu Sets by moving to the 'Next', 'Previous', 'First' or 'Last' Menu Sets by selecting the corresponding menu item. Swap Device Gadgets for Menu Gadgets You can also replace the nine Device Gadget in the top of the Control Window with the Menu Sets, this is done by checking the "Utilities, Utilities in Window" menu item. This gives you quick access to your current active Menu Sets. The Device Gadgets can still be accessed via the keyboard. By pressing keyboard numbers 1-9 (across the top of the keyboard) MegaD will load the corresponding directory as if you hit the Device Gadget that have been replaced by the Menu Sets. This is just one of the many way MegaD can be changed to suit your taste or style of work. We will be getting into the way that MegaD can be modified in a later section of the tutorial. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Database Export File 101 Export File =========== MegaD has the ability to create a data file from selected files and directories in Directory Windows that is compatible with a Database. This database would be one that would allow you to keep track of your many disks, and the many programs that are on those disk. This text can not possibly teach you how to use or control a database. But if you are familiar with databases and know the difference between a record and a field you will feel right at home with this part of MegaD. If you do not have a database this command will be of little value to you and you may want to go on to the next section of the tutorial. Setting Up Export "Export File" needs to have the attributes for the export function set before it will work. This is done by the menu item "Output, Setup Export". You will also need a 'Dest'ination Directory Window open that you want the export file written to. A good directory for this is the same directory that you would place the data files for the database. Once this Directory Window is opened and the 'Dest'ination gadget is selected, select the menu item "Output, Setup Export." The "Set Export" window will open. This window lets you set what file attributes you wish to include in your database export file. It is important that you think this part out very well or that you know your database very well. Both is even better. Some databases are rigid and allow very little changing once the database is started, others allow new fields to be added to the database and allow you to change your mind later for what information you wish to keep track of. Think about what file attributes listed on the left side of the window that you wish to keep track of and select those. I am going to select all nine of them. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Database Export File 102 Field Sizes As you can see to the right of the attributes the size of the field is listed. Should you create your database so that the fields are smaller than what is listed, you may lose information or your database will not accept the export file, It is best to create the database with at lease enough room to store the information. Field/Record Separators To the right of the window you will find two integer string gadgets. One is titled 'Field Separator', the other is titled 'Record Separator'. Both require that you know the ASCII value of the character that separates your field and records as defined by your database. The defaults are the norm for most databases. The value for the Field Separator is 44 which is the ASCII value of a comma. The value for the Record Separator is 10 which is the value of a return character. Below is the results of the export if only two files were selected to show you how and where the separator characters fit. DPaint,Work:,Work:Paint,FILE,03-26-92 17:40:35,375084,743,----rwed,, DPaint.info,Work:,Work:Paint,FILE,03-26-92 17:40:36,1630,4,----rwed,, As you can see the commas separate the file attributes and there is a return at the end of the line to signify a new record. The format is visually ugly to look at but is easily digested by a good database program. Empty Fields Notice the two commas at the end of the line. This is where the File comment should be but the files did not have one so this is an empty field that will be read by the database as such. The Filename for path string gadget is for naming your database import file. It will be appended to the path the is listed above in the text area of the Set Export window. This becomes a permanent path and filename until you change it. One of the cycle gadgets will allow you three settings. 'Export Directory & Files', 'Export Files' only and 'Export Directories' MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Database Export File 103 only. This should be self explanatory and it lets you fine tune the types of directory entries to be sent to the export file. There is another cycle gadget that allows two different settings. 'Overwrite old file' and 'Append to end of file'. 'Overwrite old file' will always create a new export file each time you select the Export File function. This deletes the old file first but not without warning you first with an option to cancel. This requires you to read the data file into your database before the Export File command is used again or you will lose your previously created export file. The 'Append to end of file' option is my favorite way to use this. The first time the 'Export File' command is used the new file is created. Each time after that the newly exported information will be appended to the end of the file. Now remember that the filename you created is somewhat permanent. As long as you save the preferences after setting the export function up, MegaD will always try to write the file to the same place and in doing so will constantly append the newly exported information. This has one drawback. You MUST delete the export file once you have read it into your database, otherwise MegaD will constantly append new information to a file that has already been used and the records for those have been created in the database. I suggest that you create an export file a few times. Each time load the newly created export file into a text window so that you can visually see how it is working. After you are sure that it is exporting the kind of information you want it to, you may start creating a database of all of your files and programs. MegaD will export all of the information found in selected volumes and directories. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Database Export File 104 To send all of the information found in a volume, select the volume you wish to export from, by selecting the corresponding entry in the 'Volumes In Memory' list. Then select the 'Export File' Command Gadget. To send all of the information found in a directory, select the directory entry in a Directory Window. Then select the 'Export File' Command Gadget. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 MegaD Preferences 105 MegaD Preferences ================= The MegaD preferences change only the internal preferences of MegaD. It has nothing to do with your system preferences for the Amiga. All mentions of preferences from this point on refer to the internal setting of MegaD. If you have taken even a quick look into what Set Preferences has to offer you will find that MegaD can be modified in many ways. There are five different areas that make up preferences, we have visited two in this tutorial so far. Set Preferences and Set Keypads are those two, we will take another look at those areas and look into the new areas Colors, Display, and Defaults. You can access all of the areas from the Project menu. The menus that deal with the preferences are Set Preferences, Save Preferences, Color, Display, Defaults, and Keypad. The Set Preferences menu item will open a window that will allow you to move to all of the other areas of the preferences. For simplifying things we will access the areas though the menu. This way after each change you will see what the modification does to the operation or appearance of MegaD. All areas have a 'Cancel' gadget that will cancel all changes to that area. All areas have a 'Use' gadget. This gadget accepts the changes made so far. Only the 'Set Preference' window has a 'Save' Gadget. When this gadget is used, the current changes are accepted and saved to the '.pf' file. This file is located in the current directory that MegaD was loaded from. Set Preferences There are two main purposes of the Set Preferences window beside giving access to the other areas of preferences. One, the setting of the Menu Sets. Two, the Setting of the Device Gadgets. We have already covered this. You may want to test out the other gadgets that we have not used so far that are MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 MegaD Preferences 106 found at the bottom of the window. The are Colors, Display, Defaults and Keypads. You may move in and out of the windows as you please. We will be accessing the windows through the Project menu equivalent so try not to change anything in the windows as you are poking around. Being we have already worked with both the Device Gadgets and the Menu Sets, we can go on to other areas that need to be explained. Close the Preferences window by selecting the Cancel gadget. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Colors 107 Colors ====== Select the menu item "Project, Colors" to open the Set Colors window. This area of Preferences is dedicated to the colors available for the display of information within MegaD windows. 1.3/2.0 Color Switch In the very center of this window is a single check type gadget which by default is set. The title of this gadgets is "1.3 / 2.0 Colors Switch" One of the many changes that happened with the new 2.0 OS for the Amiga was the change of the default colors. With this gadget checked, the system will be checked for 1.3 or 2.0 and the colors will be set accordingly. If you want to define any of the colors to your own settings this gadget will have to be un-checked. Color Conflict MegaD will check for conflicts of colors and will warn you if you try to use the conflicting colors. An example of this would be the Directory and the File colors are the same. MegaD will display the resulting selected colors in small boxes to the right of the gadgets to show the effect of the selections. You may change the colors to what you would like to have them. If you want to use more colors with MegaD, you will have to change the screen setting found in the Display preferences MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Displays 108 Display ======= Select the menu item "Project, Display" to open the Set Display window. This area lets you set the screen type and the depth or colors that you want to run MegaD under. It also lets you change how MegaD displays certain information such as dates and numbers. Possible Screens 'Screen Type' contains a cycle gadget that can be set to one of five different settings. These five possible settings define what type of screen MegaD uses. Workbench Places MegaD on the Workbench screen. Hires Creates a hires screen (usually about 640 X 200 lines) Hires-Interlace Creates a hires-interlace screen (usually about 640 X 400 lines) SuperHires * Creates a SuperHires screen (usually about 1280 X 200 lines) SuperHires-Lace * Creates a SuperHires-Interlace screen (usually about 1280 X 400 lines) The above screens that end in an '*' are only available if your system has the new ECS Chip. Date Format The Date format gadget Cycles though mm/dd/yy, dd/mm/yy , yy/mm/dd and dd/mmm/yy. This defines how MegaD will display the dates for your directory items. Use Today / Yesterday This is a check gadgets that will tell MegaD to display files created today to be marked with "Today" and files created yesterday to be marked with "Yesterday" instead of using the date for that directory item. This only functions under the 2.0 OS. 12 Hour Clock Changes the 24 hour date to a 12 hour time with am, or pm behind the date MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Displays 109 1000 Separator Set the separator to a comma, period, space or no separator for thousands. Decimal is comma This is a 'do nothing' gadget at the moment but should MegaD ever need to display floating point information, Its ready! Perform any changes that you would like and select the 'Use' gadget to see how things work. Force Update Directory Windows To show Changes If Directory Windows are open the change will not be performed on the directory listings found in them. You will have to use the menu item "Show, Reset All" to force the reformatting of the displayed information. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Defaults Area 1 110 Area 1 of Defaults ================== Select the menu item, "Project, Defaults" to open the Set Defaults window. Many settings are performed here, it takes two areas to display all of the possible settings and the different areas are access by the use of the 'More'/'OK' gadget. The first area here is controlled by the use of 'Check' gadgets. Auto resize windows This only works in window overlap mode set in the menu "Windows, Overlap locations. It will attempt to resize the directory windows larger or smaller to display as much as needed. Auto update windows Each time the directory window is opened it will be updated. MegaD buffers EVERYTHING that it loads. If that information has been changed by some other program MegaD will not know about it. MegaD first tests the actual directory entry or volume data stamp to tell if the directory has been changed. If it finds a different date it will reload the directory so that it will be current. This has the side effect of forcing you to insert a floppy disk that has been buffered, just to reopen the directory window. Confirm quit Gives you a chance not to quit MegaD if an accidental quit was issued. A simple requestor will open that reads: Quit MegaD With the options Yes or No. Iconify at start MegaD will iconify it self at startup. This is very useful if you place MegaD in your startup sequence or in the WBStartup drawer. If you do so MegaD will load and place an Icon on the Workbench screen that can be double clicked for instant access to MegaD. Keep active window to front This will force the active window directory or text window on MegaD to the front of the MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Defaults Area 1 111 screen. It will not work on the Main Control Window. The F10, F9 and F8 keys will move that window to the front if needed. Last active window is destination The last active directory window will become the destination window if no user defined destination windows are on the screen. The default is the active window is destination. (This is the default that other directory utilities have used.) Place tool icon & menu on Workbench This only works if you are using the new 2.0 operating system. (and if your not, WHY?) MegaD uses Application Icons and Application Windows on the Workbench. This way you can drop any icon on to it and MegaD will attempt to do something with it. At the least the MegaD screen will be opened if it is closed or the screen will be moved to the front of all of the screens. If a disk icon or a directory icon is dropped onto the MegaD Icon or Main Control Window MegaD will load that directory and place it into a directory window. If an AutoBoot is available that knows how to work the data file, MegaD will use the AutoBoot to work on the file. You may drop up to 10 Workbench objects onto the Icon and MegaD will work each one in sequence. Messages off This will cancel all simple information messages that only use the Continue gadget to get an answer to the request. The information usually tells you why a function or task did not work. This may cause confusion, if you can't tell why a function does not seem to work. Panic button window While tasks are working such as Delete, Copy, Move... a window will open. This window prints and scrolls information about the processing of the current task (copy, delete, etc). There are two gadgets at the bottom of the window. The first one, 'Suspend', temporarily stops the processing of the current task, allowing the user time to re-evaluate whether he really wants to continue the task. The second gadget, MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Defaults Area 1 112 'Cancel', will immediately end the current task. Both gadgets are hard to hit in a time of panic so the 'Esc' key at the upper left corner of your keyboard is dedicated to stopping the task, this is the equivalent of selecting the 'Cancel' gadget of the Panic window. The Esc key works with or without the panic window open. Save defaults at closing MegaD will save the current preferences before quitting. This is very useful at first while getting MegaD set up. This way all of the preferences will be updated after each run. Through this tutorial I have depended on this flag being set. This is why the changes that you have made were always saved when you quit. Save window positions MegaD will remember the locations of requesters and special windows and reopen them in the same locations. The default is to open the windows with the gadget under the mouse pointer if possible or to center the window under the mouse. Simple refresh windows Saves memory by opening windows that must be refreshed after having been covered by other windows. This feature takes a little more time while you're moving and changing the depth of windows, but it will save memory for systems with not enough memory to spare. Warn before copy Gives you a chance to cancel a call to copy Warn before delete Gives you a chance to cancel a call to delete. (Your a gutsy person if you un-check this item. Remember, MegaD deletes ALL marked items in ALL open Directory Windows) Warn before move Gives you a chance to cancel a call to move. Warn if deleting protected file If the file is protected MegaD will warn you MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Defaults Area 1 113 and give you the option to cancel the delete or delete anyway. Warn if replacing larger file During copy/move you will be warned if you try to copy over a larger file. Warn if replacing newer file During copy/move you will be warned if you try to copy over a newer file. Warn if replacing file During copy/move you will be warned if you try to copy over any file. F10 Closes Control Window The F10 key normally moves the MegaD Control Window to the front and rear position on the screen. If MegaD is running on the Workbench it will only work if there is a directory window open to receive input from. With this checked, instead of the window moving to the rear position the window is actual closed. You will find that there are keyboard equivalents for most functions that the Control Window provides. Thus getting rid of the Control Window will provide you with a less crowded screen. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Defaults Area 2 114 Area 2 of Defaults ================== The second area in the Set Defaults has a few string gadgets and some cycle gadgets to set the order that information is displayed in the directory window. Copy/Format Program Control MegaD will call any stand alone copy/format program. To the right of the string gadget is a "Control..." gadget. This will open a Program Control Window that will let you set your favorite disk copier/formatter. It comes set at default to run MDDisk copier/formatter. View Text Program Control MegaD has one of the most versatile text viewers around. But if you feel that another program should be called if a text file is double clicked in a directory window you may set it here. You will find another "Control..." gadget to the right on this one too. Once again, it will open a Program Control Window so that you may set your favorite program to work with MegaD. Label height How many printed lines are on the labels that you wish to use with MegaD Label. Label width How wide, in characters, are the label that you wish to use with MegaD label. Source icon for directories If you supply a name here for the an icon MegaD will use a copy of it to give newly created directories an Icon. It defaults to SYS:system which usually exist. If you do not want Icons created with directories delete all of the characters from this string. You may also select the 2.0 Default check gadget found to the right of this. This will use the system default for the icon gadget while running under the 2.0 OS. Dictionary filename This must be the name only, with out a path statement, of the dictionary file that you wish MegaD to use. The dictionary file must MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Defaults Area 2 115 be in the same directory that the program MegaD resides in. This provides the user with the option to translate MegaD to any language he or she wishes. At this writing there are no dictionary files available. To create a dictionary file, please see the regular MegaD.Doc file for that information. Create Master Dictionary By selecting this gadget MegaD will create the master dictionary. The main purpose of this file is for easy translation of MegaD to other languages. But this can be used to change any display line that you wish in MegaD. Please see the regular MegaD.Doc file for that information. Directory listing order This is a cycle gadget that will cycle though: List directories first List files first List items mixed Order of file information There are five small cycle gadgets for this setting. The higher the number, the later the information will appear in the line displaying the directory item. By setting the cycle gadgets to other values the information can be displayed in all possible orders. The 'Show, ...' menu may alter the final display. Close the Defaults Window Select the 'OK' gadget and then the 'Use' gadget to exit and test the changes that you have made. Once again if Directory Windows have information displayed in them the have been affected by the modifications you will have to select the menu item "Show, Reset All" to reformat then. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Keypad 116 Keypads ======= Select the menu item, "Project, Keypads" to open the Set Keypads window. We have spent some time in here and what follows is a recap of the functions. This is a very powerful area of MegaD Preferences. You can actually modify Menu Sets, AutoBoots, User Gadgets though here. You can rearrange, remove, duplicate functions on the keypad. Change the color of the keypad gadgets. Source Area There are two major areas of gadgets. The upper area can be considered as source gadgets that information can be copied from. Destination Area The lower area of gadgets, that are arranged in the order of a keypad at the right side of most Amiga keyboards. 'Shift Keys' to the right of the keypad represent the shifted mode of the keypad, Ctrl, Shift, Alt. This can be considered the destination area. Copying Commands Any single item can be selected in one of the two areas. As soon as an one item is selected in both areas, the information is transferred to the keypad gadgets. A blank source will create a blank do-nothing keypad gadget. You will find two cycle gadgets, One is for pages of source information, the other is to select the type of source information to transfer or to work on. The types to work on are 'Builtin', 'Menu Sets', 'AutoBoots' and 'User Gadgets'. Below this set of cycle gadgets are gadgets labeled 'Add', 'Delete', 'Modify'. By selecting a 'Menu Set', 'AutoBoot', or 'User Gadget' and then selecting the Modify gadget you can edit how a program control will function. By selecting a keypad gadget and then modify, you can change the title and color of the keypad gadget. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Preferences, Keypad 117 Should you set MegaD to 'Two Window Mode' the keypad gadgets will be arranged in the two window style so that you will be able to see just how they will look in that mode. The disadvantage of this is the keyboard equivalent of the gadgets is not represented very well. Exit from this window using the Cancel or the 'Use' gadget. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menus and Displays 118 MegaD Menus =========== You've just seen how preferences allow you the ability to customize MegaD to suit your own needs. But that's not all. MegaD allows you to further modify Directory Window features. We have briefly touched upon some of these modifications while specifying file attributes (such as protection bits, file comments, etc). Other menus give you the power to alter the complete appearance of MegaD. In this section, we will discuss how the Windows and the Show menus can change how MegaD looks and works. Windows Menu The top two selections in this menu are 'Open Windows' and 'Close Windows', both have two sub selections, 'All' and 'Selected Directories'. Open/Close All The All selections will only work with previously opened Directory Windows. It will close all directory windows on the screen or open all previously opened Directory Windows. If the 'Windows/Use Limits' menu item is not checked, you may end up with an overcrowded screen. Selected Directories The Selected Directories selection is of more use. This works on selected directories in Directory Windows, selected volumes in the 'Volumes In Memory' list and selected items in the Devices, Assigns and Drives list. Loading Directories From the Device List This is one of those options that it will be best if you test it out to see how it works. First cycle the list gadget in the Control Window to 'Devices, Assigns and Drives', select a few items in that list. Then select the menu item Windows, Open, Selected Directories. MegaD will load each selection and place it in a Directory Window. After they have been loaded, select the Windows, Close, Selected Directories. Unlike other commands, the selected items will stay selected so they can be used over again. After testing this out clear all of the selected items in the Device, Assigns and MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menus and Displays 119 Drives list, even if the list is hidden the selected items in the list will be used. Opening windows from the Volumes In Memory List We now have some buffered directories from the last action. Cycle the list gadget of the Control Window to 'Volumes In Memory' and select some of the buffered volumes in this list. Once again select the menu item Windows, Open, Selected Directories, the windows will be opened if not already on the screen. Select the opposite menu selection Windows, Close, Selected Directories and they will be removed from the screen. Clear the selected items in the 'Volumes In Memory' list for the next test of this feature. Opening Directory Windows From Selected Directories Open a Directory Window that has a few directories in it. Select some of those directories. Uncheck the 'Windows, Use Limits' menu item so that the list will not be swaped out with other directories. Select the menu item, Windows, Open, Selected Directories, the selected directories will be loaded and placed into new directory windows. Close the same windows by selecting the menu item Windows, Close, Selected Directories. Before we move on, check the 'Windows, Use Limits' and close all of the windows open to the screen. Window locations The next section of the 'Windows' menu will allow you to define how MegaD places windows on to the screen. There are three modes listed here, 'Use Overlap Locations', 'Use Grid Locations' and 'Use Snapshot Locations'. Overlap Locations The Overlap Locations is the default that MegaD comes set with. It tries to place newly loaded volumes to the right side of the last loaded volume on the screen. If the room for the new volume window is less than the smallest width that a Directory Window can be sized it will open the window to the far left of the screen instead. If you are only displaying the filename of the directory MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menus and Displays 120 entries you can get three volume to fit on one screen. The overlap comes from when you open more than one directory in one volume. You need to have the windows per volumes set to more than one. The windows are overlapped by opening the next window down a full drag bar (Window title area) and shifted to the right about the width of the close gadget. This arrangement will let you see all of the titles as the windows are overlapped on each other. Setting Volume and Window Limits Lets take a look at this in action. Select the 'Windows/2 Volumes Per Screen' and 'Windows/1 Window Per Volume...' menu items (note: these two menu items are tied together to form one menu item). A requester will open that has two integer string gadgets titled: Number Volumes Per Screen and Number of Windows per Volume Leave the Volumes set at 2 but change the 1 in the "Number of windows per Volume" to 3. Select the 'Use' gadget. Now that you have changed the limits of directories per volume you can have multiple windows open for a volume. Open a Directory Window that has a few directories listed in it. Double click some of the directories to see how the windows will overlap. Test this out with other volumes and see how this looks. After you get the feel for the overlap mode select the menu item 'Windows, Close', All so that we can test out the next mode. Use Grid Locations The 'Use Grid Locations' menu item, if checked, will place windows in a fixed grid arrangement. The grid is determined by the limits settings. At the moment the limits should be set to 2 Volumes per Screen and 3 Windows per Volume. Also the 'Use Limits' should be checked. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menus and Displays 121 Being the Volumes is set to two, MegaD will divide the screen width by two to determine how wide each Directory Window should be, thus giving us the width of each grid. This way, if the maximum number of volumes are opened to the screen the windows will fill the screen. The Windows per Volumes are set to three, MegaD will divide the screen height by three to decide how tall each directory window will be opened as. It will also place each newly loaded volume window under the pervious until the limits is reached. After the limit is reached it will swap out directories to place newly requested directories in the windows. This arrangement allows you to see all of each window opened to the screen. The draw back is the full width of the information in the Directory Windows may not be visible. The windows will be a fixed width and height that will not be automaticly resized to allow you to view the full information. Although you can still manually resize the window with the window resize gadget. Once again test this mode out and get the hang of it. Once you are satisfied that you understand how it works close all of the Directory Windows so that we can go on to the next mode. Set Snapshot / Use Snapshot Why Snapshot Snapshot is for people who want windows in set places. A snapshot window will not respect the 'Auto resize' option or the 'Use limits'. Setting Snapshot The easiest way to set up the snapshot mode is by starting out with the 'Use Overlap locations' Menu checked and the 'Use Limits' unchecked. This way MegaD will open a new window for each volume or directory requested. Select a directory to load that will have a few sub directories in it. During this process try to open windows only from within this one volume. Open this directory so that MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menus and Displays 122 you will have a window open to the screen. It is important to place each window in the place you wish it to be, and size it to the dimensions that you want as you open them. This not only sets the placement of the window but the order that the location will be used to place windows to the screen. Take A Snapshot Open, Place and size all of the windows that you want on the screen in fixed locations. MegaD will remember up to 30 window position. Select the 'Window, Set Snapshot' menu item. This will record the order, location, and size of each open Directory Window. Use Snapshot The 'Window, Use Snapshot' menu item will become unghosted, now you can check the 'Window, Use Snapshot' menu item. Directories will now be placed in the snapshot location that you set. The snapshots are used one after the other regardless of Volumes or sub-directories. Once all of the snapshot locations are filled, MegaD will start swapping directories within open windows to get them to the screen. Forcing More Windows The 'Lock' gadget comes in handy to prevent the directory you want from getting swaped out for another directory. As long as the window is Locked, MegaD will not place another directory in it. Should you lock all of the snapshot windows and request another directory, a window will open in the upper left corner of the screen for this directory. Remember to save your preferences file once you are happy with the window locations with 'Windows, Save Preferences'. The locations can be changed with 'Windows, Set Snapshot' as you please. Two Window Utility This is for the die hard fans of the older, less capable, two window utilities. The Two Window Utility is your basic idea of what a Directory Utility should be. One window to the left, One window to the right and little flexibility, that was until MegaD came along. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menus and Displays 123 Select the Two Window Utility menu item. If you were running on the Workbench screen MegaD will open a non-interlace screen for the two window mode. Two Window And The WorkBench The two window mode can not coexist with the Workbench screen. It would cover the Workbench making it useless. If you were running under you own MegaD screen MegaD will use that screen for the two window mode. Things have been shuffled around in Two Window mode. If you had buffered directories, some of those directories will have been placed into the two windows other wise the windows will be empty. Command Gadget Locations Across the bottom of the window you will find the command gadgets that used to be arranged in the same order as the keypad on the side of the keyboard. They are now in a 6 X 3 grid arrangement with the 'Shift Gadgets' located just above them in the center. Device Gadget Locations Above the 'Shift gadget' you will see your nine device gadgets. The 'Device Gadgets' have an imaginary vertical line running right down the center of them. Lets say you want to load 'Tutorial' into the left window. You should click the "left half" of the 'Tutorial' gadget. You will see a momentary flash in the left half of the 'Tutorial' gadget (the left half will be highlighted for a brief moment), and the Tutorial directory will load into the left window. Now, if you wanted to load 'Ram Disk' into the right window, you would click the "right half" of the 'Ram Disk:' gadget. This time, the right half of the Ram Disk gadget will momentarily highlight, and the Ram Disk directory will load in the right window. The 'Lock' gadget will override this feature. At the top center are three gadgets. The top gadget is the 'Free Volumes' gadget which MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menus and Displays 124 functions the same as the Free Volumes in the Control Window. The second is a cycle gadget that can be cycled from "Vol In Mem" which is the same as the 'Volumes In Memory' in the Control Window to "Devices" which is the same as the "Devices, Assigns and Drives of the Control Window. It can be cycled to a new setting in the Two Window mode. This setting is "Directory". The right window is shared by these three lists. The third is titled "Byte Info" which will bring up the byte information that use to be displayed in the center of the Control Window. the Byte window once opened is interactive with MegaD and you may use the Directory Window while it is opened. Two Window Mode There is not a lot to say about this mode. It is easy to get used to but somewhat restrictive. It only allows you two windows to work out of. There is a way to force more windows out onto the screen. By locking both Directory Windows and requesting a new directory, MegaD will have to open a new window to place the directory in it. As with all of the other modes, play around with it for a while to see how it works. You have seen all of the different modes that MegaD can be placed into to help you navigate through your volumes and directories. You should be able to find one that suits your needs. MegaD allows you to switch modes with ease so that with some tasks you may used a mode more suited for it. I suggest that you find the mode that you like best, set it to that mode and save the preference file. The Show Menu The show menu is very self explanatory. We have changed it at times so that we could see different file attributes. MegaD will let you display all of the attributes or none of the attributes except for the filename, the filename is always placed into the listing of the Directory Window. You may MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Menus and Displays 125 un-check or check the menu items to set what items to format into the Directory Window. Sorting Directories The show menu also has a Sort sub menu that allows you to sort the directories by any file attribute. Or it will sort on None, this will display the directory entries as they were read from the volume. All windows are not reformatted if the some of the show menu items are changed. Only the 'Dest'ination windows will reformat to show the new settings. If you wish to reformat all of the window to the new settings select the 'Show, Reset All' menu item. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Now What? 126 Now What? ========= We have touched base on all of the aspects of MegaD. There is no way that we can describe all of the different ways MegaD can be arranged. As you have seen MegaD has been made to be fine tuned to the users wishes. By now, you should have a basic knowledge of how MegaD works. You should be able to perform any task you want with MegaD. If MegaD can't do what you want with one of it's builtin commands, you should be able to add an external command to it to do it. You should be able to change any display attribute that MegaD uses, from major settings such as screens, to the simple setting of dates displayed in the directory listings. You should be able to modify any file attribute you wish. Copy, Move, Delete,... files and directories one at a time or in large groups. You should be able to create a listing of a directory, create a label for your disk or create a database export file for your database. You should be able to use directory patterns to reduce large listings down to a refined list to select from. The same type of patterns can be used to select items with or to search deep within volumes and directories. You many want to look through the MegaD.Doc file if you have not done so. There is information in there on how to use the dictionary file that allows you modify any displayed information that MegaD uses. If you feel that a title or message would be better written another way you may change it. Most everything else we have covered here. The Rambling_on file may offer some other answers that are still not apparent. This file is a collection of questions and answers that have been asked about MegaD. MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Index i 'Dest'ination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 'Volume In Memory' . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.3 Iconify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 1.3/2.0 Color Switch . . . . . . . . . . 107 2.0 Iconify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Abort Drag Select . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Accept Input From a file or device: . . . 80 Accessing Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Action Warnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Activating a Filter . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Active Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Active Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Add AutoBoot Skips Icon Files . . . . . . 74 Add AutoBoot Command . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Add Display Command Gadget . . . . . . . . 87 Add, Delete Menu Set Gadgets . . . . . . . 97 Adding A Menu Set . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Adding Archive List Command . . . . . . . 88 Adding User Gadgets . . . . . . . . . . . 91 After Date Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Anatomy Of The Program Control Window . . 76 Another Reason to Switch to Workbench 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Application Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Auto 'Dest'ination . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Auto Destination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Auto Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Auto resize windows . . . . . . . . . . 110 Auto Save when Quit . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Auto update windows . . . . . . . . . . 110 Available Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Before Date Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Buffered Directories . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Buffered Volume List . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Buffering a Full Volume . . . . . . . . . 39 Calculating Directory Sizes . . . . . . . 38 Cancel print jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Check Gadgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Clear By Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Clear Pattern Function . . . . . . . . . . 60 Close the Defaults Window . . . . . . . 115 Close Window Gadget . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Color Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Combine all selected on one line: . . . . 77 Command Gadget Locations . . . . . . . . 123 Command Lines and Program Controls. . . . 81 Confirm quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Copy and Rename a File . . . . . . . . . . 54 Copy/Format Program Control . . . . . . 114 MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Index ii Copying Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Copying Directories . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Copying Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Copying Groups of Files and Directories . 53 Create a Tutorial Disk . . . . . . . . . . 19 Create Dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Create Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Create Master Dictionary . . . . . . . . 115 Creating A New Menu Set . . . . . . . . . 97 Current Directories . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Date Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Delete Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Destination Area . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Destination Gadgets . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Destination Window Definition . . . . . . 50 Device Gadget Locations . . . . . . . . 123 Device Gadgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Device Gadgets keyboard Equivalent . . . . 11 Device List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Device String Gadget . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Dictionary filename . . . . . . . . . . 114 Dir User Gadget . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Directory listing order . . . . . . . . 115 Directory listings . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Directory Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Disk Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Display Protect Bits . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Double Click Directory . . . . . . . . . . 23 Double Click File . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Double Click Item . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Double Click Text File . . . . . . . . . . 33 Drag Select Items . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Drop a Disk Icon. . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Drop a Drawer Icon . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Drop a Program Icon . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Drop a Project Icon . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Drop a Text File Icon . . . . . . . . . . 41 Dropping icons onto the Application Icon . 40 Duplicate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Duplicate a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Duplicate Disk Labels . . . . . . . . . . 43 Elements of a Filter . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Empty Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Empty Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Exact Size Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Execute type cycle gadget Multitasking execute: . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 F10 Closes control window . . . . . . . 113 Field Sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Field/Record Separators . . . . . . . . 102 MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Index iii File Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Filter + Funtion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Filter - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Filter Requestor . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Find Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Find List Of Directory Items . . . . . . 71 Flags to add after Program Name: . . . . . 80 Force Update Directory Windows To show Changes . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Forced Destination . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Forcing More Windows . . . . . . . . . . 122 Free Volumes Gadget . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Freeing Buffered Volumes . . . . . . . . . 9 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Global Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Go Deep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Greater Than Size Filter . . . . . . . . . 65 Icon Gadgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Iconify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 In/Out Filter Gadget . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Information Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Keep active window to front . . . . . . 110 Keypad Banks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Keypad Gadgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Know Your System . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Label Align . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Label height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Label Modify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Label width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Last Active Window Destination . . . . . . 51 Last active window is destination . . . 111 Less Than Size Filter . . . . . . . . . . 64 Loading a text file . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Loading Directories From the Device List . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Loading selected items from the Device List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Lock Gadget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Main Control Window . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Making A List Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Making A Pack Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Making A Recursive Menu . . . . . . . . . 99 Making A Test Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Making A UnPack Menu Set . . . . . . . . . 98 Manipulating Multiple Text Windows . . . . 34 Manual Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 MegaD List Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 MegaD screen to front at end . . . . . . . 78 MegaD's Spooler . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Index iv Menu Button Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Menu Set Program Control . . . . . . . . . 96 Messages off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Mixing Multiple Filters . . . . . . . . . 69 Modify or Delete Program Controls . . . . 94 Move and Rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Moving Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Moving Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Multiple AutoBoot Window . . . . . . . . . 87 Multiple Text Windows . . . . . . . . . . 33 Multitasking Execute W/Hold: . . . . . . . 79 Multitasking Workbench (NO I/0): . . . . . 79 Navigating Through Multiple Directory Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Next/Previous Step Gadgets . . . . . . . 97 Open/Close All . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Opening Directory Windows From Selected Directories . . . . . . . . . 119 Opening Two Directory Windows . . . . . . 51 Opening windows from the Volumes In Memory List . . . . . . . . . 119 Order of file information . . . . . . . 115 Output File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Output Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Output Prt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Overlap Locations. . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Overriding Auto Destination . . . . . . . 51 Panic button window . . . . . . . . . . 111 Panic Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Parent Gadget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Path and Program Name String Gadget . . . 80 Place Program on MegaD Screen: . . . . . . 79 Place Program on Workbench Screen: . . . . 79 Place tool icon & menu on Workbench . . 111 Possible Screens . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Possible Uses of File Extension . . . . . 75 Predefined Menu Sets . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Preventing the Console Window From Opening . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Printing Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Program Control Window, String Gadgets. . 79 Protection Bits . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Query for destination filename . . . . . . 78 Quick Command Access . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Quitting MegaD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Redirect Output to a file or device: . . . 80 Reformat Directory Windows . . . . . . . . 30 Relabel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Relabel under 1.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Relabel under 2.0 and Using MegaD . . . . 25 MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Index v Reload current directory at end . . . . . 78 Rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Replace File Warning . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Save defaults at closing . . . . . . . . 112 Save window positions . . . . . . . . . 112 Save Your Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Screen control Cycle gadget . . . . . . . 78 Scrolling List Area . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Searching Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Select By Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Select Pattern Function . . . . . . . . . 60 Select Volumes for tasks . . . . . . . . . 9 Select/Clear AutoBoot Window . . . . . . . 90 Select/Clear commands . . . . . . . . . . 36 Selected Directories . . . . . . . . . . 118 Selecting Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Selecting Menu Sets . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Selecting The Data Files . . . . . . . . 74 Selecting The Executable . . . . . . . . 74 Set Keypads Window . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Set Preferences . . . . . . . . . . 27, 105 Set Protect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Set Show Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Set Show Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Set Snapshot / Use Snapshot Why Snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Set the Filter Type Gadget First . . . . 66 Setting AutoBoots As Command Gadgets . . 82 Setting Multiple Comments . . . . . . . . 35 Setting Snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Setting the device gadgets . . . . . . . 27 Setting Up Export . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Setting Volume and Window Limits . . . 120 Simple Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Simple refresh windows . . . . . . . . . 112 Single Select Item . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Sorting Directories . . . . . . . . . . 125 Source Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Source icon for directories . . . . . . 114 Source Window Definition . . . . . . . . 50 Swap Device Gadgets for Menu Gadgets . . 100 Take A Snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Testing the Reload/ Current Directory . . 94 Text Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Text to append to end of command line: . . 80 Text Window Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Text Window Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Text Window Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 The anatomy of a directory window . . . . 21 The Show Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992 Index vi Title String Gadget . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Two Window And The WorkBench . . . . . 123 Two Window Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Two Window Utility . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Un-Ghosting The Activate Gadget . . . . . 64 Update Dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Use Grid Locations . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Use Snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 User Gadget Program Control . . . . . . . 91 Using an AutoBoot . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Using an AutoBoot As A Command Gadget . . 84 Using Date filters . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Using Filter Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Using Name filters . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Using Protect filters . . . . . . . . . . 67 Using Size filters . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Using the Tutorial Disk . . . . . . . . . 26 Verify Title And Path/Name . . . . . . . 92 View Text Program Control . . . . . . . 114 Warn before copy . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Warn before delete . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Warn before move . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Warn if deleting protected file . . . . 112 Warn if replacing file . . . . . . . . . 113 Warn if replacing larger file . . . . . 113 Warn if replacing newer file . . . . . . 113 We Are the Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . 89 When You Need A Current Directory . . . . 93 Why User Gadgets? . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Wildcard Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Window locations . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Windows Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Workbench screen to front at start . . . . 78 Working in the Same Volume . . . . . . . . 56 MegaD 2.00 Tutorial, Copyright © 1992