Amiga Elysian Archive/AmigaElysianArchive.iso/screen/screenx2.arc/ScreenX.Docs

Text File | 1988-09-04 | 9KB | 201 lines

ScreenX Documentation - By Steve Tibbett.

ScreenX is a program designed to be put into your Startup sequence. It
provides a number of things that are already available in different
packages, along with a couple of it's own twists.


NOTE: INFO NEW TO V2.2 IS AT THE END OF THIS DOCUMENT.


Clearly Written Documentation??  Come on, it's a PD program!!


ScreenX's major functions are:

 1: Provide a small clock/memory counter on the Workbench Screen,
    which will take very little processor time yet be accurate.

 2: Provide a means to recover those screens that are "Lost" behind
    those stupid programs that don't bother to put Depth gadgets
    on their screens.  IE, Chessmaster.

 3: Provide an easy way to save a screen to an IFF file (Easier than
    "Flip the screen you want to the front within 10 seconds" anyway).

 4: Give me something to do for a couple of evenings.

 5: Be small enough to be put into your Startup Sequence and not take
    much memory.


ScreenX accomplishes all of these quite well.

ScreenX has two modes of operation:  When it is "Awake", and when it
is "Sleeping".  When it is sleeping, it is sitting on the Workbench
screen showing you how much Chip and Fast RAM you have, and the
current time. If you click in the ScreenX window (Thus activating it -
You cannot tell if the window is active or not because of the text
that's being printed on the title bar.  Just click in it and you will
know it's active).  When it's window is active, you can either hit the
Space Bar or the Right Mouse Button to "Wake Up" ScreenX.

When ScreenX is awake, it opens up it's own Screen (Taking about 25K
of memory doing so, which is why I made the small window in the first
place). On the left of this screen is a list of all the screens that
are currently in the system, and on the right of the screen are 7
gadgets allowing you to tell the program what to do.

These gadgets are:

   Pop Screen To Front:  This gadget will take the currently selected
                         screen and pop it to the front.  Handy for getting
                         'Hidden' screens back.

   Push Screen To Back:  If you have 4 screens in memory, and one of them
                         doesn't have Depth gadgets, you can push that
                         one to the back, and as long as you don't click any
                         of the other screens back behind it, you won't
                         have any problems.  (If you do click anything else
                         behind it, you'll have to use ScreenX to get them
                         back!)

  Update Screen List:  This will redraw the list of screens that is
                       being shown.  Necessary if any of the screens
                       there leave while you are looking at them, or if
                       new screens appear.   Note that any action taken on
                       a screen that is no longer around is ignored (even
                       clicking on it).

  Cycle All Screens:  I'll let you figure this one out on your own.  Note
              that to make it stop, you must click anywhere in the
                      main ScreenX screen...

  Close Screen:  Danger.  You got it.  This isn't something you should be
                 doing unless you KNOW what you are doing.  It will let
                 you CLOSE DOWN the screen of your choice.  The problem
                 with this is that if anybody else decides to write on that
                 screen at any time, BOOMO.  What it's really useful for is
                 when a program crashes, you can close it's screen to free
                 up a bunch of Chip RAM that is taken up.  Just make sure
                 you don't go closing the Workbench down, or something
                 stupid like that.  OK?

  Save Screen to IFF File:  This gadget will instantly turn the screen Red
                            (so you know something's going on), and save
                the screen selected into the filename in the
                Text gadget at the bottom of the screen.
                Note that the filename in that gadget must
                include the full pathname, or else if you just
                type a filename in there, it will be written to
                the current directory.



Oh ya... there are a couple of command line options for this thing too.

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS:

There are a couple of options you might want.

  -C : This will DISABLE changing colour 0 to White and colour 1 to Black for
       printing purposes.  Without this option, when you tell it to print a
       screen, color 0 and color 1 become white and black, which makes the
       printout usually look better (depending on what you are printing).
       If you are printing digitized pictures, or anything else where the
       colours actually matter, then you NEED this option.

  -E : ScreenX will eat up about 5% of the processor's time keeping the memory
       display accurate.  If you don't like this, you can put "-E" on the
       command line, which will tell it to only update the display about
       once every second and a half - this way, it's really taking NO
       time.

  -F : This option will display the free memory as BYTES rather than
       as K.  It makes the window a little bigger, but some people
       like seeing 200000 rather than 200.


        ...Steve Tibbett
           2710 Saratoga Pl. #1108
           Gloucester, Ontario
           K1T 1Z2

    (or just call my BBS at 613-731-3419).
    (or send me BIX mail at 'S.Tibbett')
    (or Plink mail at "STEVEX")

Actually, if you want the source for it, send me a disk with some sort
of a return mailer thing, (maybe even throw in some cash, eh?), and
I'll send it to ya.


/*****************************************************************/

NEW INFO FOR V2.1 OF SCREENX:

I don't think anybody ever actually wanted ScreenX to come up with the
big window open, so I took that option out altogether.  When you say
"Run ScreenX", it just opens the small window.

Put ScreenX in your startup sequence!
(This has changed - see the V2.2 notes)

I added the ability to print screens.  Click on the screen you want
printed, and then click on "Print Screen" and it will start doing it.
If you click on the Print Screen gadget while the screen is being
printed, it will usually STOP the print (unlike most programs that
tell you to click stop, but really they just ignore you).

Little warning here about printing screens:  Just after I added the
Print Screen gadget, while I was testing it, I ran into a weird
problem - I could print, say, the DiskX screen, but if I tried to
print the ScreenX screen, or the Workbench screen, I'd get a blank
page.  Well, after THREE HOURS of working on this (starting at 11
PM...), I finally figured out that if your preferences are set for
Black and White, and  your screen colors are sorta not far enuf apart
to be Black and White, it will print all white - White's an easy color
to print...  Anyway, either fiddle with the Threshold thing in
Preferences, or use Grey Scale mode.  (NOTE that this has changed.
See the command line options above.  Don't you wish I'd rewrite this
manual?)

Another new gadget: Screen Info.  What this does, is tell you my BBS
number!  There are also some less useful stats there, like the current
font that screen is using, the amount of memory that screen is using
(Note: If it says 32K, it really means 32000 bytes), the number of
Windows open on that screen, and the number of Gadgets on that screen.
The depth of that screen too - Depth = Number Bitplanes.  (It's always
fun to run a bunch of programs, and then try to find all the
gadgets...)

Ummmm, that's about it for now I guess.  If anybody can think of some
more stats to stick in the "Screen Info" window, let me know - I  sure
can't.


/******************************************************************/


V2.2 NOTES:

This version has only three enhancements.

First, if you click in the title-bar-window, and hit "F", it will
change it's display to "Largest:" and show you the Largest fragment of
memory left in that section.  (If your largest memory fragment is too
small, it's like you don't have any memory left.)

Secondly, if you put "-F" on the command line, instead of showing you
the # of K you have free, it will show you the # of bytes free.

Lastly, you NO LONGER NEED RUNBACK TO PUT THIS IN THE STARTUP
SEQUENCE! Just put "SCREENX" on a line by itself.  No RUN needed
either!  If you want ScreenX to come up when you boot, just copy
ScreenX V2.2 into the "C" directory (or onto the root directory) of
your boot disk.  Then, anywhere in your startup-sequence (before
the ENDCLI of course), just put "ScreenX".