ARM Club 3

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ ARM Club 3 / TheARMClub_PDCD3.iso / hensa / programming / b150_1 / !VarEdit_!Help < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-01-08 | 11.6 KB | 213 lines

******************************************************************* Variable editor ******************************************************************* Version 0.10, © Sam Kington 9th January 1994 WimpKey © Jason Williams 13th September 1993 Note: this is a pre-release version (this is the last time I have access to an Archimedes until March), so: * All the features I would like to add to it are not implemented * Although I think it’s pretty stable, there are probably a few bugs around. You can read this file from within the program by pressing Shift-F1 in a variable viewer, or choosing “Help” from the icon bar menu. This program requires RISC OS 3 or later - preferably RISC OS 3.10 or later, as that was the version it was developed on. It has not been tested on any other platforms, but it *should* work on RISC OS 3.11 and 3.00. If you haven’t upgraded yet to RISC OS 3, you should: there is a lot of very nice software (not just this ;-) ) coming out that requires RISC OS 3. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to adapt it to work on RISC OS 2 because it would look ugly without all the 3D stuff (and 3D is good - it’s official, Acorn says so). Boring legal notice ---------------------- This program is freeware (*NOT* public domain - I retain full copyright on code and documentation). It can be freely distributed provided the following conditions are met: * Only reasonable charges are made for media and distribution - so PD libraries can distribute it, but contact me for an up to date version. * You distribute all the files without modification, including the Choices file. If you want to modify the files, include the original files in a ”Unused“ directory or something. You can use bits of it in free or commercial projects, but contact me first and credit me in any documentation. The WimpKeys module is © Jason Williams (with slight style modifications by myself). See Docs.WKeyDocs for more information. Other documentation and files ------------------------------ Docs.Vars is a list of various "special" system variables as defined in the RISC OS 3 PRMs. Docs.O!WimpKey and Docs.O!WKeyDocs are the old (as in unmodified) versions of the WimpKey module and the documentation respectively. Docs.Misc contains thanks, acknowledgements, a wish list, contact addresses and other miscellaneous stuff. The TaskObey directory contains several files which show various types or styles of variables in a task window. For people with very little memory, it's still a great deal better than shelling out to the CLI all the time. The !Vsn010 file serves no other purpose than to tell you this is version 0.10. So what does it do? -------------------- Very simply, VarEdit is a variable editor. That is, system variables like Obey$Dir, Alarm$Options, Alias$@RunType_FFF, Edit$Detokenise and the like (see "What are system variables” for more information). VarEdit can do the following with variables: * Show lists of variables in a scrolling window on the desktop. As well as showing all variables, it will show variables by type (String, Number or Macro), or by style. The styles, currently hard-wired into the program, are at the moment: - ...$Dir : all App$Dir variables - ...$Path : all App$Path variables - File$Type_... : all file types - Alias$@Load..., Alias@$Run..., Alias@$Print... : load, run and print operations * Change the contents of variables. * Rename, copy and delete variables. * Save a list of current variables and their settings to a file or an application, either a straight list or by styles. * Find and replace text within variables * Find specific variables by name * Show graphical statistics on the number of variables in each type and style. * Provide complete customisation of all the keyboard short-cuts used by the program. You can optionally see a list of shortcuts used by the program, or a graphical representation of the keys used. * Comprehensive help is available with Acorn’s !Help, available at any time by clicking on the small Help icons, or by pressing F1. What are system variables? -------------------------- Some of them are set up by the system, most of them are defined by applications; sooner or later, you will want to view or change some of them. RISC OS uses system variables to decide what to do when you click on or print a file, to remember where applications are, where !System and !Scrap are, where fonts are held, where to find all its Template and Message files (amongst other things). The application suite uses variables (Draw$Options et al) for user customisation, as do other applications during the Desktop Save protocol. To see how important variables are, *AFTER SAVING ALL YOUR WORK*, enter the command “*Unset *” from the CLI, and see how long the machine survives. (You will probably have to reset after this, as RISC OS has effectively forgotten everything it has learned since booting up). Using this program ------------------ Things should be self-explanatory - if in doubt, click on the Help icons, move the pointer over a few icons and read the (hopefully) helpful messages. Almost every icon and all menu options are documented, so you should be able to find your way around. Here are a few general comments about using this program; use !Help for more information about menus, icons etc. To change a variable’s definition, just type in the new value and either press Return or move the caret in some way (the up- or down-arrows, or click in another part of the window). The ”Show variable“ window shows you what variable you are currently editing, and more importantly its current value (*not* necessarily the text visible in the window). Pressing Escape will cancel any changes you have made. Those icons in a variable viewer (usually “ABC” but occasionally “<>“ or even ”123“) represent the type of the variable - respectively, String, Macro and Number. Clicking on them doesn’t do anything. However, when the type icon is selected, that means that the appropriate variable is the current one - either the one with the caret, or the one found by ”Find“ or ”Go to variable“. To go straight to a variable, the best way is usually to use the Goto dialogue box (F5) - type in the first few letters of the variable you are looking for and select Find (or press Return). If you select ”Search as you type“, VarEdit will automatically find variables as you type, so you can browse the list by changing the text in the dialogue box, on the fly. There is another way: pressing Ctrl-Shift-(A to Z) will go to the first variable starting with that letter, or the nearest one if there isn’t one. Be warned however: Ctrl-U clears the current line, and cannot easily be trapped as it’s a WIMP shortcut. So if you type Ctrl-Shift-U, you will go to the nearest variable starting with ”U“, but you will also wipe the variable you were at previously, and you won’t be able to undo the changes as you’ve moved, so the variable will have been definately written. So don’t press Ctrl-Shift-U! Other key shortcuts: Ctrl-Up and Down take the caret to the top or the bottom of the viewer respectively, Shift-Up and Shift-Down (or PageUp and PageDown) scroll the window up or down by one page *without* moving the caret, and finally Ctrl-Shift Up and Down scroll the window up and down by one line at a time. As soon as the caret moves, the window will scroll up or down so it is always visible. You will find that some menu options (the second half of the Edit and Utilities menus), and the Edit and Delete icons in the “variable styles” window stay shaded whatever you do. This is because this is pre-release (see above), so I haven’t put everything in yet. Those blank icons in the “Variable styles“ and ”Statistics“ windows are spaces left for defining new styles (...$Options springs to mind) - a nice thing to have, but not essential. See Docs.Wishlist for other things I would like to add to the program. VarEdit needs to spend some time loading the variables and creating viewers for them; on an ARM3 it isn’t too much of a problem, and on an ARM2 it’s not *that* slow. Remember, typing *Show at the CLI takes time too. VarEdit can either hog the whole machine when it’s processing, or it can process in the background. By default it will allow other tasks to have a go at running the machine every 10 variables, but you can modify this in the Choices dialogue box. In general, multi-tasking every 10 variables or not multitasking take about the same time, and multi-tasking every 1 variable really slows the machine down - don’t try this on an ARM2! Non-multitasking gives you more information about the process, as it knows it can write directly to the screen as it’s not letting you back to the machine to move its window around. The rule is, experiment and use the system you prefer. Key shortcuts (thanks to WimpKey - see Docs.WKeyDocs) are available for every menu option, and some other functions such as closing windows or iconising them. To set keys, click on the ”Keys...“ icon in the Choices dialogue box. Choose a menu and an option, and then press the key you want to associate with the option; VarEdit will not allow you to use the same shortcut for two functions, nor will it allow you to use F12, so you don’t have to worry. This will only work if the ”Keyboard shortcuts“ window has the input focus (if the title is cream rather than grey). If for some reason it loses the input focus, you can get it back by clicking Select or Adjust on the window background. Clicking Menu will bring up a sample menu showing what all the menus would look like with the current key shortcuts - purely for show, so don’t click on it because nothing will happen. You can see a list of current shortcuts by clicking on See List. VarEdit simply saves a text file with the key shortcuts, menu by menu, called <VarEdit$KeyListFile>. The variable VarEdit$KeyListFile is a macro, and by default points to a file called ”KeyList“ in the !Scrap directory, but you can change this by editing the !Run file, or for that matter editing the variable in VarEdit ;-). It will then Filer_Run it, so if a text editor is running it will load the file, otherwise the default owner of Text files will be run to edit it - usually Edit, unless you have changed Alias$@RunType_FFF somewhere (check it - it should be a Macro with <Edit$BootDir> somewhere). Finally, although theoretically variable names and values can be up to 255 characters long or even longer, VarEdit only allows variable names of up to 40 characters and values of up to 80 characters. If you have variables longer than that: * You shouldn’t have. Even Font$Path shouldn’t be that long. Long variables are difficult to read. If a variable is long, it’s probably because it contains either a very long path name (which is probably something to be avoided as well), or several longish path names. Why not replace the individual path names by variables, and make the long variable a variable? (Font$Path already is, so there’s no excuse). In general, you should use variables rather than absolute path names: they’re easier to read, and you don’t have to change things all the time if you move things around. * You can modify the variables VarEdit$NameLen and VarEdit$ValLen in the !Run file or wherever they are defined. Make sure they are numbers, and less than 255. VarEdit will warn you if it has to truncate variable names or values. If it has truncated anything, *QUIT THE PROGRAM!*. You run the risk of corrupting the system variables.