Automatic startup — installing Arcgsh as a desktop application

A very common situation is that you are working with the GEM desktop or another shell browsing through your files. Now suppose you have an archive file of any kind in one window and want to have a quick look at its contents (or do something else with it). If it were a text file you could doubleclick at it and view it with the desktop's built-in file viewer.

This is of course inappropriate for an archive file, because it is not a text file. What you could do is open another window, navigate to the directory where you have Arcgsh installed, doubleclick at ARCGSH.PRG, select the appropriate archiver from the ``File'' menu, navigate the file selector box to the directory where your archive resides, select the ``list'' command for the archiver and execute the latter.

However, Arcgsh in cooperation with the GEM desktop offers you a much simpler method which works under TOS 1.4 (``Rainbow TOS'') or higher TOS versions13: You can tell the GEM desktop to install Arcgsh as a desktop application. After having done that all you need to do is doubleclicking at the archive file. Arcgsh will automatically start up and display the right dialog box with the name of the archive file already filled in. Simply select a command button — e. g. ``list'' — and click at \framebox{\sf OK}.

You can do the same with a uuencoded file: Doubleclicking on a file with the extension .UUE causes Arcgsh to start and display the uud parameter box with the name of the uuencoded file filled in.

Here is a short explanation on how to install Arcgsh as a desktop application14:

  1. On the GEM desktop select the file ARCGSH.PRG.

  2. Move the mouse cursor to the ``EXTRAS'' menu and select the ``Install application'' menu entry.

  3. Type ZOO into the ``file type'' field and click at the \framebox{\sf Install} button.

  4. Select the ``Save work'' menu entry from the ``EXTRAS'' menu. This causes the file DESKTOP.INF to be written to the root directory of your boot disk now and will make Arcgsh permanently installed as a desktop application.

What you have done so far is installing Arcgsh as an application for zoo archive files. Whenever you doubleclick at a file with extension .ZOO Arcgsh will start up and display the zoo dialog box. If you go on and install Arcgsh in the same way as described for the other archivers and uud, specifying the extensions .ARC, .LZH, .TAR, and .UUE you will fail. The reason is a limitation of the GEM desktop which forgets about an earlier specified extension if a new one is given for an installed application.

To circumvent this problem you have to edit the file DESKTOP.INF with a text editor after you have performed the above mentioned steps. Somewhere in DESKTOP.INF you will find a line like

#G 03 04 C: \BIN \ARCGSH \ARCGSH.PRG@ *.ZOO@

Here C: \BIN \ARCGSH \ARCGSH.PRG is the full pathname of the Arcgsh program. It may well be different on your installation. The string *.ZOO specifies the files for which Arcgsh should start up automatically.

Copy this line four times and change the string ZOO within the copies to ARC, LZH, TAR and UUE, resp. Now you should have

#G 03 04 C: \BIN \ARCGSH \ARCGSH.PRG@ *.ARC@
#G 03 04 C: \BIN \ARCGSH \ARCGSH.PRG@ *.LZH@
#G 03 04 C: \BIN \ARCGSH \ARCGSH.PRG@ *.TAR@
#G 03 04 C: \BIN \ARCGSH \ARCGSH.PRG@ *.ZOO@
#G 03 04 C: \BIN \ARCGSH \ARCGSH.PRG@ *.UUE@

Save DESKTOP.INF to disk and reboot the system. After that Arcgsh automatically starts up for arc, lharc, tar and zoo archive files and uuecoded files with the extension .UUE.