When I first saw the System 7 Finder’s “About This Macintosh” display, I thought it looked really cool. Then I tried to make it DO something, like switch me to an application when I clicked its icon. I was somewhat disappointed when nothing happened. I was even more disappointed to find I couldn’t make the display appear automatically when I started up the Mac! So, out of frustration, I decided to write my own version.
The result is About, a process monitor. Its appearance is an unabashed knockoff of the Finder’s display; but unlike that display, you can actually use About to interact with your processes and get information on them. A little arrow appears next to the current process. Clicking an icon switches you to its process, and option–clicking an icon hides or shows that process, just like the Hide and Show commands in the application menu. You can customize the display in many ways—use large icons if you prefer, or arrange the processes by their location in memory to reveal the “holes” in your address space.
Other commands allow you to monitor background–only processes, view CPU load, create an “icon palette” of your favorite applications, find a running application’s location on disk, and force other processes to quit. About can also maintain a log of application activity.
RESTRICTIONS
About requires System 7.
About will not show the individual icons of applications run from a floppy.
ABOUT PROCESSES
A process is a program that’s running on your Macintosh. Each application you run is a process. Under System 7, each desk accessory you run may also be a process. For some reason, a control panel is not a process—it’s run as an extension of the Finder. Your Mac may be running other processes that you don’t even know about—File Sharing is a good example. When you start up File Sharing, the system creates a “background-only” process named “File Sharing Extension.”
Each process has its own “partition”—an area of your Mac’s memory dedicated to that process. When you change an application’s Preferred size with the Finder’s Get Info command, you’re adjusting the size of its process partition.
COMMANDS
Here’s a quick rundown of About’s menu commands and other features. Balloon Help™ is also available for the menu commands.
OPEN OTHER
This command on the “File” menu lets you open other applications, desk accessories, or the Finder. It allows you to use About as a Finder replacement, if you wish.
LOGGING
About can log process activity to a tab-delimited text file it creates when you choose the “Open Log” command from the “File” menu. About records the activity (open or quit), the process name, and the date/time of the activity. NOTE: Quit times are approximate.
Each time it’s launched, About reopens the log file and records any additional activity to the end, until you choose the “Close Log” command.
VIEW BY
About’s “View” menu lets you customize the display. You can sort the list of processes by their names (the default), the size of their memory partitions, the order in which they were launched, or the location of their partitions in memory. The last choice is only available if you turn off the “Group System Software” option (see ABOUT MEMORY, below).
VIEW WITH
You can view the processes with their small icons (the default) or their large icons. You may find the large icons easier to click on.
OTHER VIEW OPTIONS
“Show Machine Info” is on by default. When you turn it off, the banner at the top of the window goes away. This banner contains the machine icon and type, the System Software version, and some memory information. It’s pretty, but if you can’t afford the screen real–estate, take it away.
“Group System Software” is on by default. When you turn it off, the pseudo–process “System Software” is split into its component processes: the Finder and any background processes that may be running (such as “File Sharing Extension”). Background processes appear in italics (or whatever style Finder alias names use), and their icons don’t respond to clicks.
“Show Partition Sizes” is on by default. Turning it off makes the partition size information go away, and the window fills horizontally with process icons. You can now change the window’s width when you resize it, to adjust the number of columns and form an icon palette. The processes are sorted vertically when you view with small icons, and they’re sorted horizontally when you view with large icons.
“Auto–Zoom”
When the number of processes changes, the window will automatically zoom to accomodate the new list size if this option is turned on.
MANIPULATING PROCESSES
To manipulate a process, select it by clicking or typing its name (or click anything but the icon). When you select a process this way, the “Process” menu is enabled. From that menu, you can get more detailed information about the process, find its icon on disk, or force it to quit.
To select multiple processes, hold down the shift key. To select discontiguous processes or to deselect processes, hold down the command key. You can move the selection with the arrow keys. Press return to switch to the selected process, and option–return to hide/show its layer. Scroll the list with the page up, page down, home, and end keys.
GET INFO
This command displays detailed information about the process: its kind; memory partition size and used bytes; disk location; and its launch date and process. Double–click the process name as a shortcut for this command.
FIND APPLICATION
This command asks the Finder to locate the icon of the selected process. The Finder may behave a little screwy after you do this—once it finds an icon, you may need to click several times on another object or press the esc key to get it deselected. Sorry, it’s not my fault!
EXCLUDING AND INCLUDING
If you never want to see a certain process, just select it and choose “Always Exclude” from the “Process” menu. To restore the excluded process to the list, choose “Show Excluded” from the “Edit” menu.
If you always want to have a process’ icon available, even when the process isn’t running, select it and choose “Always Include” from the “Process” menu. When you quit the process, its icon will remain in the list with an “offline” appearance. Click the icon to launch the process! To remove an included process from the list, select it (while the process isn’t running) and choose “Clear” from the “Edit” menu. This lets you build a palette that will launch your favorite applications with a single click!
QUIT OTHERS
This command asks the selected processes to quit. You may be prompted to save your changes.
Desk accessories and some older applications can’t be quit unless the Finder is running. About warns you if a process can’t be quit; you’ll have to switch to the process and manually choose its Quit command.
MISCELLANEOUS
About will remember your window location and size, your View settings, your Exclude/Include settings, and your Logging status. This makes it quite suitable for use as a Startup Item.
You can click a process icon even when About is in the background, and About will switch you to that process.
When System Software is ungrouped, the system version also displays the version of any System Tune–Up you may have installed.
ABOUT MEMORY
When “Show Partition Sizes” is on, About displays the amount of memory used by each process. If “Group System Software” is also on, About subtracts 16K from each partition size. Why? Well, the Macintosh operating system uses 16K more than the “Preferred size” value you provide in the Finder’s Get Info window for an application. The Finder subtracts this extra memory from the value it lists in its “About This Macintosh” display, so About does the same thing. Where does the extra 16K go? It is added to the “System Software” bar. You might notice when you quit an application, “System Software” shrinks by about 16K.
The Finder also adjusts its “Largest Unused Block” value to match. Since 16K more memory is required to launch an application than what you’re told about, the Finder subtracts 16K from the size of the Largest Unused Block, so you won’t think you have room to launch an application that would just fit. What’s more, the Finder subtracts another 10K from the Largest Unused Block just for good measure! About does the same thing, just to be consistent. This 26K also goes into the “System Software” bar.
So what does “System Software” actually represent? Well, it's the partition size for the Finder, plus any background–only processes. Add in the size of the system heap, plus any allocated temporary memory. Also add in all those 16K fudge factors from every other running process, plus another 26K not reported in the Largest Unused Block.
About plays this charade until you ungroup System Software. Then, the fudge factors go away, and true process sizes are reported. The Finder and other background–only processes each get their own bars. As for the other system memory, it’s added together and placed in the Machine Info banner as “System Memory.” If you installed the Symbionts extension, About will also report the portion of system memory used by your system extensions.
For the most accurate picture of your memory, ungroup System Software, show Partition Sizes, and view by Partitions (small icons may be more aesthetically pleasing). You will now see gray bars named “unused” separating some of your applications. The Largest Unused Block is not necessarily the ONLY unused block of memory. These gray bars represent the other unused blocks. They’re “holes” in your memory that get formed by quitting applications not adjacent to the Largest Unused Block, or they may be chunks of temporary memory that were allocated and locked down by one of your running applications. (The Finder and File Sharing Extension both do this.) To reclaim this unused memory, you must coalesce it back into the Largest Unused Block by quitting the applications that stand between the unused memory and the bottom of the list.
If you have more than 8MB of RAM, the excess memory will be added to System Software if 32-Bit Addressing is off. When About detects this condition, it warns you that you have unuseable memory.
ABOUT CPU LOAD
When you view with large icons and show partition sizes, About displays the percentage of the CPU used by each process, updated approximately every two seconds. These percentages appear as red bars beneath the memory partition bars.
Sometimes the numbers don’t total to 100%. What was the Mac doing the rest of the time? The missing CPU time might have been used by excluded processes, or by background-only processes that you don’t see if “Group System Software” is checked. Part of the time might also be used by system extensions you have installed; they steal time from your applications to do their work. Or the remaining time might have been spent simply idling—waiting for you to click the mouse or to type.
You may notice About using a large percentage of the CPU. This is because About is designed to soak up all available idle time, and use it to monitor the other processes. But, when you want to do real work on the Mac, About takes a back seat. About’s design also causes it to be more active when it’s the frontmost application. When About is in the background, you’ll see its CPU usage drop considerably.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
I didn’t have enough time to implement all the features I wanted About to have. I decided that I should set it free rather than wait until it’s perfect. In the next version of About, expect to see
• Balloon Help™ for ALL windows.
• The Get Info window updating when the information changes.
• A “Show Geek Info” button in the Get Info window that will display process mode flags and various other esoteric hexadecimal values.
• The Get Info command changing to Get Finder Info when you hold down the option key.
• Allow CPU load to be seen when viewing with small icons.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to…
Donald Major, for rendering the mountains.
Kevin Hardman, for Symbionts.
Chris Zuleeg, for the Quadra 800.
Hugues Marty, for information on the undocumented Layer Manager.
René G.A. Ros, for long distance beta testing, from The Netherlands. His “Supplemental Gestalt Selectors List” was also an invaluable aid.
Special thanks to my wife Darylene.
WHAT’S NEW IN ABOUT 1.0.1
BUGS FIXED
• Don’t zoom the top of the window off the screen.
• Don’t replace included processes with zero K unused blocks.
• Don’t display a CPU load for unused blocks.
• Improve accuracy of memory partition bars.
• Sort System Software bar correctly when viewed by size.
• Don’t try to update the “System Software” bar if it doesn’t exist.
• Position all icons correctly.
• Info windows now go away reliably when a process quits while viewing by partition.
• Column labels now precede first “Start” event when log is created.
• Don’t log included processes when they go away.
NEW FEATURES
• Don’t bail if preferences can’t be opened.
• Ignore option key when switching to About from another process.
• Add a close box to the About window as a shortcut for the Application menu’s “Hide About” command.
• Display version number in lower-left corner.
• Show included processes at the top of the list when viewed by size, to be consistent with the other non-name views.
• Center “unused” when viewing with large icons.
• When the mouse moves over a process cell whose name has been truncated, temporarily show the name without truncation, inside a 1-pixel box (a’la At Ease).
• Truncate VM volume string in the middle, rather than at the end.
• Change “Quit Others” to “Quit <name-of-selected-process>” if only one process selected.
• About now determines the “shell application”—the first application launched by the system, and makes it the “System Software” bar if System Software is grouped. Usually, the shell application is Finder, but it can be something else (At Ease, for example). If so, Finder (when running) will not be grouped with the System Software, but will appear as a normal application process. If the shell process goes away, so does the “System Software” bar.
• Get Info “launched by” now reports orphans and system children more accurately. The shell process is launched by “the system at startup.” All other system children are just launched by “the system.”
• Make sure System Software, the Finder, and the shell are all considered system processes.
MISCELLANEOUS
• Rebuilt with THINK C 6.0; adjusted segment attributes.
• Increase background sleep time to reduce About’s CPU load.
• About is now a better international citizen. This version makes extensive use of the Script Manager to treat all text with the respect and attention it deserves.
YOURS TRULY
I hope you enjoy using About. If you have any comments, suggestions, or bug reports, e-mail them to me at Michael_Hecht@mac.sas.com.
