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SysBar/2 ~~~~~~~~~~ toolbar-style utility set for OS/2 PM version 0.21 (c) 1995-99 by Dmitry I. Platonoff <dip@platonoff.com> (c) 2002,03 by Max Alekseyev <relf@os2.ru> ************* README file ************* =============================================================================== OVERVIEW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SysBar/2 is the next generation of SysBar, a toolbar-style utility. The first version (Win16) was written in 1995 from an impression of the Win95 taskbar, seen once in early betas. It looked like the OS/2 Warp 4.0 WarpCenter, more than year before it emerged! It had the same functionality - taskbar, trays & info displays. I use it now as a Win-OS/2 shell and even in Win NT 3.51 as a program launcher. In this new generation I've decided to split the whole product into a set of small utilities. The set now consists of these four modules: - clock (the one I really missed from Windows SysBar) - it lives well on the top of WarpCenter's clock :) ; - a floating task switcher; - a pipe monitor - the utility which can retrieve system information, can read data from any number of named pipes and display it in the useful form as a row of cells; - a tiny CD player. =============================================================================== DISTRIBUTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SysBar/2 is a *FREEWARE* product. This program is developed and distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. =============================================================================== SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All you need is a 486 or better computer and OS/2 Warp 4.0. It will work also under 3.0 (and even 2.1x - I just have no such a system to check, please report me the results of your try if you still have such a dinosaur running :). TCP/IP services, if installed in your system, will also add some extra functionality to SysBar/2, although it works well without these services (dynamic DLL bindings are used). =============================================================================== INSTALLATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's no sophisticated installation software supplied. Just unzip the package into any directory and enjoy! ;) There is a folder creation script, called SB2_FLDR.CMD. It will create the SysBar/2 folder on your desktop and all the required program icons. The files in package are: FILE_ID .DIZ 371 - package description SB2_CD .Exe 32,307 - CD player executable SB2_CLCK.Exe 21,344 - clock executable SB2_FLD1.ICO 4,026 - folder icon SB2_FLD2.ICO 4,026 - open folder icon SB2_FLDR.CMD 1,080 - folder creation script SB2_Pipe.Exe 60,832 - pipe monitor executable SB2_TSWT.Exe 30,753 - task switcher executable sysbar2 .dll 20,058 - a DLL with common GUI subroutines \docs - documentation \info_src - information source script sample =============================================================================== USAGE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All the modules have the same look, behaviour & controls. You can drag them anywhere with left mouse button and invoke a pop-up menu with the right mouse button. There is one exception: in Task Switcher the drag and pop-up menu functions will work only when clicking the empty edge of the window -- in other cases you'll get a task-specific action. All the modules have modern-looking properties dialogs. All the changes you make will be applied immediately. Each module stores its configuration in its own text .Cfg file. You can view and alter these files easily (if needed). You can also specify a config file name as a first command-line parameter. This is useful, for example, when starting multiple pipe monitor instances to show different pipe sets. All the actions are simple and easy to understand. In addition I'll describe some task-specific features... * CLOCK It does only one thing - it displays the time, month and date and allows you to adjust these values. That's all. * TASK SWITCHER It displays a set of icons representing all the current jobs and windows. You can filter them (hide or show) and perform a number of actions. You may define exceptions to control application visibility and other parameters. Every exception must have a title to match the application title beginning. (For example, "Desktop" entry will apply to the desktop icon, and "OS/2" entry will match all the windows such as "OS/2 Command Prompt", "OS/2 System", etc.). Every exception entry can have its visibility set separately for the Task Switcher window and in the system task list (the one which called with Ctrl-Esc). You can also make it "non-jumpable" (excluded from the Alt-Esc switch sequence). DO NOT ADD AN EMPTY STRING TO THE FILTER! Mouse controls (when clicking an icon): LEFT BUTTON - switch to task if this task is inactive or minimize if it has focus currently; RIGHT BUTTON - pop-up menu (a complete copy of task's system menu); RIGHT with LEFT (clicking RIGHT BUTTON when holding LEFT already) - minimize task's window; LEFT with RIGHT - close window (kill task). The mouse buttons can be swapped, of course. * PIPE MONITOR It can: - display the CPU load percentage; - display available physical memory; - display available drive/partition space; - monitor specified file size and file counts; - display current power or battery usage status; - display current time; - display current date; - display system uptime; - display the number of currently running processes and threads; - monitor POP3 mailox; - display network interface traffic statistics; - display current keyboard layout for Keyboard Layer/2 KBD switcher; - display current status for AICQ (a textmode ICQ client); - display SETI@HOME completion percentage; - display CPU and motherboard temperature, voltage and other parameters (together with the ThermoProtect monitor); - open a number of named pipes (in the server mode) and read data from these sources. Any text arriving through the pipe will be displayed in a separate (for every pipe) cell using its own colour. This is useful for displaying system information, for debugging purposes, messaging, etc. Number formatting options. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are some types of cells which can display byte amounts (like a filesize or available drive space). These number formatting options allow you to setup how to show numbers, when the Pipe Monitor should use Mbytes, Kbytes and bytes and how to name them. For each cell of this type you can setup its own number formatting options or use a default (they are on the second page of display settings.) Cell setup. ~~~~~~~~~~ There is a "Cells" page in the properties notebook. It allows you to manage information cells of the Pipe Monitor. You can create cells, setup them, assign special parameters, etc. Every cell has its own name. You can also type a string in the "Prefix" field. This string will be placed in the beginning of the cell text (to let you know what this cell about :). Another field named "Empty" defines a string which will be displayed when an empty message arrives or when there is nothing to display; for example, there are no files for the file monitor. For each cell you may set its own text and background color. Moreover, it can change its color automatically when the monitored value reaches a certain level. You can specify conditions for both text or numeric data cells. For example, you may paint your CPU load cell red for high load (>80%), yellow for medium (>50%) and leave the green for the rest as the default color. Or paint the "LATIN" keyboard layout blue and "RU411" red, the default Keyboard Layer/2 colors. Please note that you have to specify the exact values to compare (don't forget "%" for CPU load, "Mb" for megabytes and so on). Not only text content matters, but its length as well (e.g. if the cell text is longer than yours it assumed to be "greater"). There's also a special "lazy shrink" feature. It makes often updated cell shrink only after a certain delay. This prevents Pipe Monitor window from jumping (making itself bigger or smaller every time because of cell text changes). You can assign two applications for each cell: one to launch when you double-click the cell and another to launch at every text change (USE IT WITH CAUTION! Do not setup such a thing for frequently updated cells like clock or CPU meter! But this is good to start your mail reader when your mail arrived. Note also that this program will not be launched on an empty message or if you clear the text manually.) Just enter an executable name, e.g. "d:\my_dir\my_app.exe", or use the "Browse" button. You can also supply commandline arguments as well as the special "%s" parameter which will be replaced with the current cell text. All the cell changes can be logged in the internal buffer or an external log file. You can assign the log file name, turn on timestamping and select the size of internal buffer (this allows you to browse the latest cell changes). When creating a cell you must setup its data type and some special parameters. If you press the "Setup" button, a cell setup dialog will appear. You must select cell type and set its options. The following cell types exist: - "CPU load meter", a cell that shows CPU load percentage. It has a refresh timeout (in seconds) and the ability to limit the CPU load value to 99% (to remain within two characters). There's an alternate CPU meter available on some systems with latest fixpacks applied (it will appear as "Use newer DosPerfSysCall method" checkbox). The old one caused traps on some systems while working fine with others, so I've included this new one as an option; - "available physical memory", shows the amount of free physical memory. It also has only a refresh timeout; - "drive/partition free space", a cell that displays available space on the specified drive. Its parameters are: drive, refresh timeout and number formatting options; - "file monitor", a file monitor which shows the size and/or count of the file(s) specified by mask. Its parameters are: file specification, refresh timeout and number formatting options; - "battery status", a power or battery usage monitor. Its parameter is the refresh timeout. NOTE: it will work only if you have advanced power management driver installed (APM.SYS); - "clock", shows current time. It has the same refresh timeout and two switches: to toggle the display of seconds and select either AM/PM or 24-h mode; - "calendar", shows current date. It has same refresh timeout and four switches: to turn on/off day of the week, month, year and month format. Actually the calendar and clock cells in the Pipe Monitor offer more functionality than the Clock module itself. But I like its LCD display style, and also it was the first module in the entire SysBar family. so I still keep it included in the package. You can also replace the weekday and month names in the end of SB2_PIPE.Cfg file with your own (possibly, in your language). - "system uptime", shows how long your system has run since the last reboot. It has a refresh timeout (as always) and two switches: to turn on/off the display of seconds and days (e.g. "57 hours" or "2 days and 9 hours"); - "system processes", shows the count of active tasks, threads and modules. It has its refresh timeout and three switches to control the appearance of all the numbers mentioned above; - "POP3 mailbox", shows the number of messages and their total size in a POP3 mailbox. It has its refresh timeout (I discommend the use of a timeout less than a minute or so), server URL, and three switches to control the appearance of message count, total size and communication errors. URL must be in the standard form of "user:password@host:port", e.g. "scott:tiger@oracle.com". Port is optional, default value is 110. BE CAREFUL: the password is stored in the the same text config file, so keep it from be accessed by strangers. There's also one additional switch for debugging purposes -- "Show server output". When enabled it will display the exact server output (e.g. "+OK 4 12805") instead of the formatted message count and size. If you turn on cell logging when this switch is set, the program will also log all its conversation with the POP3 server; - "IP traffic" -- "incoming" and "outgoing", show incoming and outgoing IP traffic statistics; such as current, average, peak CPS, and the sum of bytes tranferred. It has its refresh timeout, interface selection control (to select an interface to monitor, e.g. LAN, PPP, etc.), and four switches to control the appearance of statistics components. It is recommended to place these two traffic cells into a separate window by creating another instance of the monitor. Just specify a different config filename as the first commandline parameter. This will avoid unnecessary window blinking because of the function's high refresh rate. - "custom pipe listener", a named pipe reader. It will accept any text arriving through the pipe and display it in the cell. It has two parameters: (1) the exact pipe device name, e.g., "\pipe\my_pipe". This is the name of the pipe for your information source program to send data to. (2) the expire timeout, which is optional. This timeout lets you make a cell's content time-sensitive. The cell will "expire" and disappear after the specified number of seconds (useful for irregular info sources). There is also number of special pipes with pre-defined names: "AICQ pipe", an AICQ status pipe to be used with AICQ by Pavel Nikiforov (pavel@intsys.ru). The latest version of this ICQ client can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.intsys.ru/pub/aicq/ "Keyboard Layer/2 pipe", a keyboard layout pipe to be used with Keyboard Layer/2 by Dmitry Steklenev (glass@skib.ru). More information about this powerful keyboard switcher can be found at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/7567/ "SETI@HOME pipe", displays the completion percentage for SETI@HOME the distributed propram, which goal is to find the footprints of the extraterrestial life. The SB2SETI percentage reporter utility written by Dave Serls (serls@dashs.denver.co.us) is found at http://www.dimensional.com/~serls/sorbis.html "ThermoProtect pipe", the whole bunch of pipes to use with ThermoProtect by David Wei (davidwei@cybermail.net), which allows to monitor your CPU and motherboard temperature and voltage. More product information is found at http://www.pcenduser.com/ThermoProtect/ There is an information source example supplied. A REXX script that shows a few simple ways to retrieve system information like hard disk space, swap file size, scan inbound directories, etc. You can modify it for your own needs. All external sources (as well as your own ones) must be started manually from startup.cmd, Startup folder, of from where you like. AND DON'T FORGET TO SETUP APPROPRIATE PIPES IN MONITOR!!! * CD PLAYER It can play audio CDs. The commands are: play, stop, pause, eject, next track & previous track. There are four time display modes - try the "00:00" button. It doesn't use OS/2 multimedia support, so you can play your audio CDs without having the multimedia installed. =============================================================================== FUTURE PLANS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following are the future plans from the last SysBar/2 release. Unfortunately, the product development has stopped and I have no further plans to continue it anymore, therefore there's no guarantee they will ever be implemented (unless there will be other people contributing to the project). * COMMON - "stick together" feature (=> Terje Flaaronning); - colour drag'n'drop (=> Terje Flaaronning); - activation corners and screen edges (=> Thorsten Haude); - rollup feature (=> Ronny Ko). - an open interface for new module development with SOM object support«Γ¬αδΓδ⌐ (=> Sergey I. Yevtushenko); ...all this stuff will be implemented in SysBar III. * CD PLAYER - digital transfer support (=> Dmitry Ban); - an open interface for new multimedia data format players (=> Alexander Krapivin); - disc recognition, disc & track name display; - CDDB support (both local files and internet connections); - programmable track order (=> Ingmar Hensler). * CLOCK - alarms (pop-up messages & scheduler) (=> Alexander Ernst); - a calendar (=> Tibor Nagy). * PIPE MONITOR - yet more system information sources. * TASK SWITCHER - virtual desktops (=> Dmitry Kubov); - window attribute control; - global task management commands. * !!! NEW COMPONENTS - launch panel; - calculator (=> George Brink). * !!! IMPORTANT - I'm looking for beta testers; - if you think that SysBar/2 docs should be translated to any language you like - just translate and send all this stuff to me. It will be included in the next release of the product; - if you want to write your own version of English docs - DO IT! I need a fresh look at all this software. =============================================================================== ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to thank these people who helped (and still help) me in this work: Andrew Tereshechkin (aka Red Alligator) for the inspiration that made me begin this project, for criticizing all the CD players in the world (including mine :), for ideas, suggestions and a lot of testing work my wife Helga for love and support Igor E. Fedorenko for OS/2 API tips and some ideas; for POP3 mailbox peeker code Maxim Penzin for testing and for some great ideas (especially for the idea of Pipe Monitor) Sergey I. Yevtushenko for CPU load meter code samples and PM API tips Peter Fitzsimmons for showing me the way to access the system menus software developers who built the support for SysBar/2 Pipe Monitor in their products: Dmitry Steklenev (Keyboard Layer/2) Pavel Nikiforov (AICQ) Dave Serls (SB2SETI) David Wei (ThermoProtect) product reviewers: Chris Wenham (OS/2 e-Zine) Ronny Ko (OS/2 Computing! Magazine) Alexander Krapivin (Russian Underground/2) Antonio Manara Rossini (Just WARP!) README translators: Gianluca Della Vedova (Italian) Thomas Voggenreiter (German) beta-testers: Andrew Tereshechkin Maxim Penzin Gianluca Della Vedova Thorsten Haude Bjorn Tore Hoem Antonio Manara Denis Dubensky Stepan Kazakov Vit Timchishin Eugen Kuleshov Sergey Gryaznov and also... George Brink Stanislav Grushko Serge Popov Alexander Ernst Emmanuele Vigni Panacea Tech Support Alexander Bezborodov Thorsten Haude Yasushi Ono Alexander Krapivin Andrey Buzanakow Alexander Cherkaew Andrey Serdiukov Oleg Kostyuchenko Serge Pashanin ...for additional testing and for attention to the product =============================================================================== CONTACTING THE AUTHOR ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The author of SysBar product series is Dmitry I. Platonoff, 27-year-old software engineer from Waterloo, Ontario (Canada). I was born in Russia, in Omsk (a 1,5-million city in West Siberia), therefore please excuse my English :). E-mail: dip@platonoff.com Version 0.19 is maintaned by Max Alekseyev. Bugreports/suggestions are welcome! E-mail: relf@os2.ru -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-