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1993-06-17
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Symphony Fix 1.00 help file
© Martin Ebourne, 1993
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This software is COPYRIGHT, but has been released as FREEWARE. Please see the
end of this file for conditions of use and distribution.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It's a well known fact that the window tools on Digital Symphony, while
better than the normal RISC OS ones, are dire. This is a great shame because
Symphony is an otherwise excellent program.
I know one reviewer critisised this aspect heavily, and quite rightly so with
the program exhibiting such non-RISC OS characteristics. I am amongst those
(along with Acorn) who believe firmly that consistency is of upmost
importance in making RISC OS look nice, feel nice and be easy to use.
Anyway, it seems that Oregan think quite the opposite. When asked about the
window tools they replied along the lines of ‘if you want it to use the WIMP
then hack it yourself’. So that's what I did.
Symphony Fix is dead easy to use; just run it before Symphony itself and when
you open a window - as if by magic - it will suddenly have your nice
favourite window tools. There's nothing else to it really.
Points about Digital Symphony, Symphony Fix and life in general...
• As far as I know, Symphony Fix works on all versions of Digital Symphony,
and unless Oregan deliberately prevent it from working (which would be very
stupid) it ought to work for many versions to come.
• On Symphony version 1.20 (or presumably later) the volume bar on the
control panel will not go quite to the right hand end. This is due to
Symphony not expecting the window to have got scrolled, and is both
extremely awkard to sort out, and very minor. Hence it can stay there.
• Symphony Fix performs two operations:
• Reset the colours of the window to be sensible (they even changed the
scrollbar colours for the pane windows - yuck!). This is done to all
windows, but at worse should force another one of these dodgy programs to
use the correct colours. :-)
• Add a real title bar and buttons. This happens to any window which has a
title foreground colour of 255. This is very unlikely to affect any other
program because if the title colour is set as such the WIMP does not draw
any window furniture at all. Hence unless you are deliberately replacing
it then such a setting is of very little use.
• The scrollbar colours are still not quite right. This is done on purpose in
order to hide the border round the window on the panes, which makes it look
even worse than the scrollbars. Besides, this problem does not occur if you
have re-defined your toolsprites. (Which is highly likely since even I
would prefer the Symphony ones to the standard RISC OS ones!)
• There are still no scrollbars. These would be very useful, especially for
the big windows, but due to the fact that they nearly all have pane
windows it is not possible without a fairly major re-write of the program
itself. (ie. It could not sensibly be ‘hacked in’.)
• And all this for the measly sum of 596 bytes! I dunno, first class bargain!
• Perhaps if Oregan heard it from the people who bought (or are thinking of
buying) Symphony that the tools were unpopular (this is definately the case
with all the people I know), they might actually do something about it.
After all, if they are THAT keen on these sprites, why not just provide a
tools file which can then be *ToolSprites'd so all the windows can benefit?
(Or even if they put an option in the Preferences window to remove them it
would be ok. Then all those people who couldn't be bothered to upgrade to
RISC OS 3 can still have 3d toolsprites if they are keen. [Not upgrading to
RISC OS 3 - bad move. Not to be encouraged])
• Other minor points about Digital Symphony (just in case Oregan get hold of
this):
• The re-sync on mode change routine is painfully slow, especially when
changing from a normal to a multisync mode. It was well under a second on
ProTrack, so why does it take several on Symphony? Come on guys, you've
done it once, do it again!
• Also Symphony seems to break up occasionally. ie. Under fairly intensive
disk operations it doesn't seem to get its interrupts. Again, ProTrack
managed it, so why not Symphony?
• If they sorted these problems out (and the window tools) I'd be rather
keen to buy Symphony, since this demo version is a real pain quitting
when it feels like it. (Plus saving would be a bonus.) As it is, I'd be
tempted to buy Desktop Tracker, which in all other respects is an
inferior program. (In my opinion, of course. I don't want to be taken to
court for libel - I can't afford it!)
• I think it's about time you went and listened to your favourite tracker
using Symphony (unless you are already doing that!) so I'll finish after
this bit...
*************
* READ THIS *
*************
Copyright notice:
This program is copyright Martin Ebourne. It is *not* Public Domain, but it
*is* Freeware. This means that you may use it yourself, and may distribute it
to others provided that you pass it on *as is*, with all the files with which
it came. You may not distribute it any way which leads to you or anyone else
making profit from it. This means that you can only charge enough to cover
the costs of media and postage involved in distribution, and you may not use
it as an incentive to buy something else. If in doubt, contact the author at
the address below.
The author's permission *must* be obtained before this program is included on
any magazine disc or such like, and it would be greatly appreciated if PD
libraries could do likewise.
And don't forget - ignorance is no defense!
Thanks for the copyright notice Tom, I knew you wouldn't mind! :-)
I can be contacted at the following address:
1 Malvern Road
Acocks Green
Birmingham
B27 6EG
or via the net term time:
mje@soton.ac.uk (until I either fail my exams [guess what I should have been
doing when I wrote this... ;-)] or finish my course in 1995 sometime.)