OPUS MAGELLAN 2 TUTORIAL (PART 1)
By
Ray Hawkins
PREFACE
I have been asked by a number of THE CRYPT egroup members to write a tutorial on how
to set up and configure Opus Magellan 2. Now writing a tutorial for a workbench replacement
as complex and highly configurable as Opus Magellan 2 is NOT a simple task. There are so many
ways in which Opus can be configured and all of which depend on the users personal taste and
preferences.
However what I will attempt to do is to take you through the basic stages and then
follow on with a few tweaks that I have personally used. I will also mention some of the
things that you won't find in the manual. I hope that this will help Opus users to understand
the program a little better and start you on your path to a first class functional and superb
looking desktop.
PREPARATION
Now for the purpose of this tutorial I am going to assume that you have not yet
installed Opus to your system and have the complete disk or CD-ROM package to hand.
I will also assume that you are running workbench v3.0. I have no idea if what I am
about to tell you works or applies to OS 3.5. Well, just like most jobs, careful
reparation is necessary to ensure a good final result. After all you wouldn't paint
your house without rubbing down the old paintwork first, nor would you wax polish your
car without first giving it a wash. The same applies to installing and setting up
Opus.
The first thing to do is go into your Prefs drawer and turn OFF all the
patterns, pictures and backdrops that you may have and re-save. Next, go into the
Fonts prefs and select the default ugly Topaz font and again resave. You don't want
any Sound prefs either, just the standard bleep will do fine. In other words you set
everything back to the old boring standard workbench with plain grey screens, windows
backdrops and font.
Why? Simple really, Opus is now going to take care of all those functions
from now on and more important there is no point in having TWO preference files in
memory using up that precious 2 megs of chip ram. All done? Let's get started.
INSTALLATION
Opus Magellan 2 is straight forward enough to install to your hard drive,
although it is done in two parts. First you install Opus v5.6 and enter your
registration details and follow up immediately with installing the Magellan 2 program
over the top of it.
Magellan 2 now makes various changes to Opus v5.6 and automatically updates it
to V5.8. You have to enter your registration details all over again and then reboot
your Amiga. That's the installation done.
CONFIGURATION - THE BASIC SET UP
At first you won't see many changes to your workbench screen other than a
large button bank on the right hand side, a favourites button and a Opus replacement
workbench title bar, and if you`re running NewIcons your RAM disk icon will be messed
up. Let's sort out that RAM icon first.
The first thing to do is to copy the RAM icon image into your Prefs drawer.
Next you need to edit your startup-sequence so that Opus can find the correct icon
image on boot up. Add the following line to your startup-sequence and save.
Copy >NIL DH0:Prefs/Disk.info RAM:
This new line needs to be inserted after:-
Assign >NIL: HELP: LOCALE:Help DEFER
And of course DH0: could be WORK: or SYSTEM or whatever you call your bootable
partition.
A quick re-boot and you will now find that minor problem solved. Now did you
notice that when Opus loads that there is a progress bar in the middle of your screen?
Don't like it? Nor did I, so let's get rid of it. Again you need to edit your
startup-sequence. And again it's very simple, just add QUIET to the LoadWB command
which you will find towards the end of your startup-sequence and of course save.
Here's how it should look:-
C:LoadWB QUIET
Now that the Ram icon image and progress indicator bar is eliminated we will
get down to some serious work. I don't personally use the Favourites button so to get
shot of it you will need to do the following:-
Click open your root drawer, DH0: WORK: or what ever you have called it and
you will now see a Opus lister containing the contents of the partition. Double click
the Opus5 directory, go into the Groups directory and delete the favourites.info, just
the info not the directory.
Now let's get rid of that large button bank that's on the right hand side of
the screen. To do this you'll see a little blank edge at the very top of the lister
menu, click once on it to activate its pop up menu, then click "Close".
Next we want to display the clock, so go into the top "Settings" menu, and
click on the clock so that there's a tick by the side of it. Next we need to save all
this work that we've done so far, so, go into the "Settings/Environment" submenu, and
click on the command "Save Layout" so that a tick appears by the side of the command,
then finally for this part click on the "Save" command, NOT the "SaveAs" command, just
the "Save" command.
Now hopefully after a full reboot and a trip back into DOpus Magellan you'll be
greeted with a bare screen still, but no messed up RAM icon, button bar and Favourites
icon, if that's the case you've done great so far.
FURTHER CONFIGURATION WORK
Next on the agenda are a few settings to wet the appetite, so, go into the
"Settings/Environment" menu, and do the following:-
"Backgrounds" Tick the "Enable Backgrounds" and making sure that there's no box
ticked on the "Use WBPattern Prefs" use the desktop folder gadget to point to a
directory where you keep your background pics, I personally reckon that
DH0:Prefs/Patterns is a good and obvious place to keep them. This is where you put
back all your patterns, backdrops and pictures. Good isn't it?
"CLI Launching"
Click on the long button with the word "Set" on it in order to resize your own
CLI window, by holding the mouse button down while on the top bar of the CLI window
you can resize the window vertically, or click and drag the bottom right-hand "Resize"
button to resize the window horizontally.
"Copy"
Tick ALL boxes
"Delete"
Tick the Commencing delete box
"Desktop"
Pretty self explanatory.
"Directories"
Directory Caching, set to 100 and tick re-read modified caches. Set Maximum
Filename Length to 30
"Display Mode"
If using DOpus Magellan as a WB clone then set DOpus up as a Workbench Clone,
or if using DOpus as a WB replacement, set it up as Workbench Use.
"Hide Method"
Make sure the clock is selected
"Icon Display"
Tick Enable NewIcons if you use them and set Pen Precision to 16. Now we will
get rid of the ugly default Topaz font. Click on each in turn of the Desktop and
Window buttons and select the fonts that you wish to use. You can also choose the
COLOUR as well!
"Icon Settings"
From the long list I have "ticked" the following:-
Allow icons with no labels
Cache icon images
Perform all actions on icons
Show arrow on left-out icons
Split long icon labels
Use custom drag routines
"Lister Colours"
You decide, it's YOUR workbench.
"Lister Default"
Again, your choice.
"Lister Display"
You can have a different font here if you wish.
"Lister Options"
Until you get used to deep configuration I suggest you only tick the following here:-
Device List In New Lister
Always Use Snapshot Position
Name Mode Popup
Allow File Select On Source Activation
"Locale"
Change to suit your own needs.
"Miscellaneous"
Tick the boxes
Mouse button over inactive banks and Quick Quit and Filetype Sniffer.
"Palette"
Leave this totally alone, I never touch it.
"Path List"
I will cover this in detail in a future tutorial.
"Priority"
Should all be set to Zero
"Replace"
Tick both boxes.
"Sound Events"
Again this is a tutorial in its self.
"WB Emulation"
I've ticked Display AppIcons and Hide Bad Disks.
And that's a fair bit of configuration work done so far. Time now to:-
**Save ALL settings after you've changed them**
Now re-boot and you should have a half decent albeit a rather bare desktop. In the
next issue of THE CRYPT I will explain how to set up a START button, other useful
button banks, dock icons to launch your favourite applications from and also how to
install THEMES and SOUND EVENTS. Until then, keep Opusing.
Ray
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