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!WorkSpace Desktop Utility
==========================
Documentation for !WorkSpace application version 3.72 24-Aug-1998,
requires RISC OS 3.1 or later.
Issue: 3.72 25-Aug-1998, replaces: 0.10 23-Oct-1992
1.00 25-Oct-1992
1.01 25-Nov-1992
2.00 16-Jan-1993
2.10 27-Jan-1993
3.00 12-Feb-1994
3.50 05-Apr-1994
3.60 01-Oct-1995
Author: David J Ruck
Copyright © DEEJ Technology PLC 1992-1998
Overview
========
With the increasing amount of RAM available in new RISC OS machines it is now
easy to have many applications running on the desktop at once, even with
larger screen modes the desktop can often become overcrowded with windows,
leading to annoyance and inefficiency.
!WorkSpace aims to solve this problem by providing six RISC OS desktop
workspaces. These workspaces are similar to the feature provided on HPVUE®
on Hewlett Packard UNIX machines.
Workspaces can be switched between transparently to the applications, giving
six times as much space to arrange windows as before, more elbow room than
afforded by even the most expensive hi-res graphic card and large screen
monitor.
Using !WorkSpace
================
On installing !WorkSpace, six monitor icons are placed on the left hand side
of the iconbar. Clicking on these icons will select the corresponding
workspace. The current workspace has small picture of a desktop screen
displayed on the iconbar monitor icons.
The desktop can be used in the normally in all workspaces, applications can
be started and windows opened and moved around. On changing from one
workspace to another, the windows in the current workspace will disappear
and any windows in the new workspace will become visible. On changing back to
the first workspace all windows on it are restored in the same position as
before. The iconbar remains the same across all workspaces.
This will enable you to group applications windows together on each
workspace, while still being able to access the full facilities of the
machine. e.g. A wordprocessor’s windows in one workspace and a spreadsheet’s
in another, along with the related filer windows for those files. Any hotlink
facility will function across workspaces as normal.
Users often become used to arranging windows in different layouts according
to which task is being accomplished, such as having the main editing window
in one position and tools and other dialog boxes placed around it. If however
more than set of applications needs to be used at once, it is often to not
possible to use a such layouts without windows overlapping and having to
constantly use the back icon. Now different layouts can be used on each
workspace, the WindOpen module also available from DEEJ Technology can be
used to automatically open and arrange windows from an Obey file.
Workspaces are preserved over mode changes and accessing the command line
(via F12), although the window positions in a workspace can be altered if
switching to a smaller mode. The desktop screen mode of each workspace can be
fixed, so that when switching between workspaces the mode that used last time
it was visited will be restored. For example; this will allow the user to run
a painting program requiring a 24 bits per pixel colour mode in one
workspace, and in another, a DTP application which performs better with a
higher resolution 8 bpp mode.
Similarly the desktop palette can also be fixed for each workspace, allowing
the standard palette to be used on one, a 16 grey level palette on another
and a specialist colour one (such as supplied with !Artworks) on a third
workspace.
Note: Occasionally windows from other workspaces will appear briefly as the
mode change is taking place, windows will be restored to their correct
positions after a few moments.
!Workspace regularly checks the position of windows to ensure that they are
on the correct workspace and moves them if not, thus it can handle badly
behaved applications which try to move their windows on screen when not
desired.
Newly opened windows always appear on the current workspace.
Selecting a windows workspace
-----------------------------
It is often desirable to allow a window to occupy more than one workspace, so
it can be used from each without having to switch between them, e.g. this is
useful for the root filer window, a CPU usage meter or a desktop clock.
If a window is present on more than one workspace it can have different sizes
and positions in each. It is still the same window however, and not the same
as the new view facility offered by programs such as !Draw, so it cannot have
different attributes such as ‘zoom’ on each workspace.
If the menu button of the mouse is pressed over the back icon of a window, a
selector box will appear allowing the workspaces that window occupies to be
selected. It may be necessary to hold down the menu button for a few moments
when the desktop is very busy.
The workspaces a window occupies is shown by the monitor icons, the picture
of the desktop appears in the monitors corresponding to workspaces it is on.
A window can occupy from one to all of the workspaces.
Clicking on a monitor icon with the select mouse button will select that
workspace and deselect all others.
Clicking with the adjust button will toggle its state, allowing the window to
be added or removed form a workspace with out affecting its presence on the
others.
The ALL button can be used to quickly set the window to appear on all
workspaces.
The OK button should be pressed after finishing selecting the window’s
workspaces. If the window has been removed from the current workspace it will
disappear immediately, it will then only be accessible from the other
selected workspaces.
If OK is not pressed the state of the window before the dialog was called up
will be restored. It is not possible to deselect a window from all
workspaces, if this is desired the window should be closed instead.
To leave the selection box without changing anything, click on any other area
of the desktop.
Using the Hotkey
----------------
It may sometimes be necessary to change the workspaces of a window which does
not have a back icon, such dialog or tool boxes. A hot key feature is
available to do this. Pressing the hot key (the default is CTRL SHIFT and TAB
together) while the mouse is over the window in question will also bring up
the selector box. It may be necessary to remove the caret from certain
windows such as task windows (by clicking in another window) for this feature
to work.
Selecting multiple windows
--------------------------
Some windows such as those used by !Draw or !Impression have tool boxes or
subpanes, when changing the workspace of the main window these will be not be
affected, causing them to be left them behind on the original workspace.
To avoid this, or to change the workspace of many normal windows at once,
chose the Select Windows option from the iconbar menu. The mouse pointer will
change to an arrow and a picture of a window, move the mouse to any part of
the screen and hold down the select mouse button. You can then drag out a
dotted rectangle containing the windows for which you want to change
workspaces.
A workspace selector window will appear over one of the selected windows.
After choosing the new workspace settings, all windows whose work areas are
completely contained within the dragged rectangle will be given the new
settings.
The iconbar menu
----------------
Info Displays a standard information dialogue box.
Fetch Window Use ths option to fetch a window which is currently
on another workspace and bring it to the current one.
The option leads to a sub menus of tasks and windows.
If the window is already on the current workspace it
will be brought to the top of the window stack.
Goto Window Use this option to goto the workspace occupied by a
window. The window is choosen via submenus as above.
If the window is on more than one workspace, the
workspaces will be cycled through in turn.
Select Windows Allows multiple windows to be selected, see above.
Any of the WorkSpace iconbar menus can be used, the
selection will always take place on the current
workspace.
Choices The choices entry will bring up the choices dialog
which is described in detail below.
Quit When the application is quit, windows on all
workspaces will be restored, placing them back on
screen in the positions that they occupied in each
workspace.
The choices dialog
------------------
The choices dialog allows various workspace features to be set up and saved
so that it becomes the default each time !WorkSpace is run.
Fix Mode When fix mode is ticked for a the workspace, it will
remember what mode it is currently in, and will
change to it when next selecting the workspace. The
mode can be changed as normal whilst fix mode is on.
If fix mode is not ticked, the workspace will always
use the current mode, i.e. what ever mode is being
used when switching to the workspace.
All workspaces may have fix mode set independently,
and each workspace may operate in a different screen
mode. A mode number can be entered in each writable
box, so that this mode is used next time the
workspace is switched to. New mode descriptions
strings may be used under RISC OS 3.5 and above,
e.g. X1024 Y768 C32K EX1 EY1 F60.
Fix Palette Fix palette works in the same way as fix mode, the
palette of the current workspace is remembered and
will be restored on next selecting this workspace.
The current palette my be altered as usual and is
preserved over mode changes both from the palettes
utility and by changing mode using the fixed mode
option of !WorkSpace.
The fix palette option only affects the desktop
palette in 256 colour modes. Extended 8 bit palettes
provided by graphics cards are not altered.
Icon sets The WIMP and many applications provide two sets of
icons, one for low resolution (2×4 pixel) and one
for high resolution (2×2 pixel) modes. Normally the
set of icons for the current type of mode is loaded
and remains the same if the resolution is changed
subsequently.
If use low & high resolution icon sets is ticked the
correct set of icons will be loaded whenever the
mode is changed from low to high or high to low
resolution.
Sprite files containing a set of icons can be
dragged to the high res and low res writable fields,
or the pathname of the files typed in.
Two icon set files are provided within !WorkSpace
providing icons similar to those from Acorns
!NewLook application. These files can be found by
double clicking on the !WorkSpace directory with
shift held down. Extra icons from applications can
be added to the files using !Paint.
Hot key The hot key is used to bring up a workspace selector
for windows which don't have a back icon. By default
it is CTRL+SHIFT+TAB, but if this key combination is
used by another application, it can be changed to
another.
To change click on the writable icon and press the
desired key combination.
Valid hot keys are usually a key that does produce a
printable character (darker grey on most keyboards)
in combination with SHIFT and/or CTRL, for more
information see the RISC OS User Guide.
Save By pressing the save button the current settings are
stored with in !WorkSpace and will be restored every
time !WorkSpace is run.
Cancel All changes made to the settings are abandoned, and
the dialog is closed.
OK The changes made to the setting are applied and the
dialog is closed unless adjust is used to click on
the button.
If icon sets are in use the filenames are checked
and the appropriate icon set for the current modes
resolution is loaded.
If the fix mode number for the current workspace has
been set, the mode will not be changed until this
workspace is next selected.
Information
===========
When using workspaces, windows which are already present on one workspace
often will not appear when requested from another .
e.g. Double clicking on a directory when its filer viewer is already in
another workspace, or trying to bring up task manager window from
its icon after having already having done this on another workspace.
The solution to this is to switch to the workspace which the desired window
is on and allow it to occupy both workspaces using the selector dialog by
pressing the menu mouse button over the windows back icon.
When switching between workspaces, windows are not closed, so no lose of
data can occur, instead they are moved off screen using only legal RISC OS
window manager calls.
While !WorkSpace is running you will be able to move windows partially off
screen to the right and bottom, this is a feature of the desktop and can be
enabled permanently using the !Configure application in the Apps folder.
Artworks
--------
Please note that !Artworks and a few other badly behaved applications
constantly force their tool boxes to stay on screen, thus causing them to
stick on all workspaces, this is not a problem with !WorkSpace.
A work around for this problem is to iconify the offending main window (by
holding down SHIFT and clicking on the close icon) before changing
workspace. The window can the be restored onto any workspace by clicking on
the windows icon on the backdrop.
Windopen
--------
The DEEJ Technology PLC module WindOpen can be used to arrange windows into
standard layout from a simple Obey file. It can interact with !WorkSpace, so
that workspaces can be switched between, and windows set to occupy more than
one workspace in different positions and sizes if desired. This is achieved
by using simple *star commands which specifying the windows title and which
task it belongs to.
Programmers
-----------
If you are developing programs using multiple panned windows or non-standard
titlebars, information on how to make your program !WorkSpace friendly can be
obtained from DEEJ Technology PLC via your supplier.
Changes
=======
Since Version 3.60
------------------
* New Fetch & Goto Windows Menus.
* Choices saved to <WorkSpace$ChoicesDir>, setup in !Run.
* Updated icons22 & icons24 sets from RISC OS 3.7 ROM.
* Unused wimp message types filtered out.
* Options dialog reverts all options on cancel.
* No error if caret owner is not found on changing workspaces.
* Windows brought to top when placed on new workspace.
* Internationalisable messages file added.
* Interactive help supported.
Since Version 3.70
------------------
* Restrictions in RISC OS Lib over size and number of items in menus.
The task menu is limited to 64 entries, with additonal entries cannot be
displayed. If the windows menu becomes too big, additional submenus in the
task menu are created.
Since Version 3.71
------------------
* Windows with no titles are not displayed in menus
* Bug causing window submenus to be display in incorrect positions fixed
End of !WorkSpace.!Help