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1994-11-17
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ScreenSelect
************
Version: 2.1 , Release date: 03-Oct-93
Copyright (C) 1992,1993 Markus Aalto (1)
---------- Footnotes ----------
(1) This program is freeware. You may freely distribute it as long
as you don't charge more than nominal fee for copying it (max 3 US$)
and no deletions is made to the original package. You may also include
it to freely distributable disks such as Fred Fish collection.
This program is distributed without warranty of any kind. So I take
no responsibility about this program, its documentation, functionality
or damages it may cause.
Introduction
************
In version 2 of
Amiga
operating system was introduced a concept of
Public Screens. These screens can be shared by application programs
just like Workbench screen has been in previous OS versions. Although
they bring a great addition to Amiga they also introduce a problem to
users which have Workbench, several Public and propably a few custom
screens open at the same time. And the problem is - "How to get that xxx
screen to front quickly without traversing through 5 other screens with
left-amiga m
?". Well,
ScreenSelect
is answer to that question
because it opens a small window to the active screen after hotkey
selection where you can select the new frontmost screen with just a
click of the mouse. Also you can make hotkey bindings to any screens
(not just Public ones as in older versions) and for example get
Workbench screen frontmost with only one key press. And the only
requirement is that you have
Kickstart 2.04
(V37) or greater.
Installation
************
I have provided a script for Commodore's
Installer
program so if
you have it then you should propably use it. Otherwise you can do
following actions.
* Move
ScreenSelect
to
WBStartup
directory.
* Move
ScreenSelectPrefs
to
Prefs
directory.
* Move one of the doc files anywhere you normally store document
files.
ToolTypes and CLI usage
***********************
ScreenSelect
recognizes normal commodity tooltypes and one of
its own.
CX_POPUP
This switch enables
ScreenSelect
to open its window when it's
started. Default is no popup.
CX_PRIORITY=xxx
This is
ScreenSelect
's priority as commodity. Here
xxx
is
decimal number. Default is 0.
CX_POPKEY=HOTKEY
Default is
shift esc
. For example you could use
CX_POPKEY=alt
shift del to change hotkey. If you specify popkey here you
override the settings you have made with
ScreenSelectPrefs
program.
PREFSPROGRAM=PATH
This is the path where preferences program is to be found. This
name must include the name of the preferences program. Default
PATH is
SYS:Prefs/ScreenSelectPrefs
. see Preferences.
Main Window
***********
You can see the main selection window for
ScreenSelect
by pressing
the user configurable hotkey. This brings you a small window with few
buttons and a listview with names of open screens. Public screens all
have identifiable names but there are programs which use custom screens
and doesn't specify any name for it. Screens like that are shown as
(Nameless Screen)
.
Quit
By pressing button (or
Q
) you can remove
ScreenSelect
and any
patches it has installed.
About
This gives you a small info about this program and its author
(that's me :^).
Prefs
This one opens the separate preferences program you can use to
modify
ScreenSelect
's behaviour. All changes come active
instantly after you have exited preferences program with pressing
either
Save
or
Use
buttons.
Update
This one updates the listview and default pubscreen texts to
reflect current system state. This is only usefull if you haven't
installed
Auto Update
patches. You can install the patches with
ScreenSelectPrefs
program. see Preferences.
Listview gadget
Click any of the names to get that screen to front. Single click
just activates the name which you can then activate with
Activate
gadget. Double click makes an instant activation.
You can also use cursor keys to move up and down in listview.
Activation can be made from keyboard with
a
or
return
keys.
Default PubScreen
This one shows the name of the default pubscreen. If you have
installed the
Change Default PubScreen
hotkey you can use it to
select active public screen as your default public screen.
Activate
Activates the current listview selection and closes the window.
Cancel
Closes the window and returns back to the screen where hotkey
selection was made.
General Info
************
There are few special options you can change with preferences
program. Here are brief explanations about them. see Preferences
Screen Types
Currently
ScreenSelect
can show only Public screens or all
screens.
AutoUpdate Patches
This patches 4 Intuition functions to achieve automatic update in
listview and in Default PubScreen textgadget. Patched functions
are: OpenScreen, OpenScreenTagList, CloseScreen and
SetDefaultPubScreen.
Window Position Modes
You can control the position of
ScreenSelect
's main window with
three possible options:
Fixed
,
Relative
and
SmartPointer
.
Fixed
mode forces window to always open to some predefined
coordinates.
Relative
always tries to position the window so that pointer
is over the
Activate
gadget.
SmartPointer
first tries to position the window so that
pointer is over the last selected screen name. If this isn't
possible it then forces pointer to move there.
Window Autoactivation
You can set few options to control
ScreenSelect
's behaviour with
window activation.
If you have
Window AutoActivation
mode ON, it tries to activate
window from screen you are changing to. It doesn't work most of
the times because it just examines the windows and tries to be
smart when deciding which window to activate.
If also
InputHandler
is ON, then
ScreenSelect
'hears' all the
changes with window actications. This helps you only with changes
through
ScreenSelect
. If you change screen with
left-amiga
m
ScreenSelect
has no way of knowing that you have switched to
new screen except if you have added
LoadView
patch.
If
LoadView
patch is active then
ScreenSelect
can hear all the
screen changes and can always change new active window. As this
one says it installs a patch to
LoadView
function in
graphics.library. It's a very time critical place and while I
haven't confronted any problems, it might be a source of problem
for users with heavy animation needs. If you encounter any
problems with animations you should first try to take this off
before starting to look problems elsewhere.
So lets go all modes through one more time.
Window
AutoActivation activates autoactivation mode.
InputHandler
option enables
ScreenSelect
to remember all changes with screens
active windows and
LoadView Patch
enables to hear all the
frontmost screen changes. For best possible operation I suggest
you to select them all.
Preferences
***********
Main Prefs
==========
After you have started
ScreenSelectPrefs
you get a window very
similar to the system preferences program. All the actions from menus
and
Save
,
Use
and
Cancel
buttons are exactly the same as in
system programs so they are not explained here. Please consult your
AmigaDOS manual for more info.
However there are two buttons labeled as Options and Hotkeys. These
are the buttons