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BLACK HOLE II =============== Introduction ============ Black Hole was written to provide quick and easy ways of doing some of the more tedious jobs under RISC OS. It started life as a wastebin, but then whenever I found a job I wanted an application for, I added it to Black Hole. Black Hole provides the following: * A quick and easy way of deleting files. All of the wipe options can be set from within Black Hole. * It provides wipe features not normally available, such as the ability to retain directories. * It can be configured to keep a backup copy of any file it deletes, for a specified length of time. This is for those of you who delete things by accident. I know I do, but then I've got a screw well and truly undone. Wibble. * All operations are carried out in the background as much as possible. This means you can get on with other things while BlackHole grinds away at your disc. * It provides a facility for saving files from desktop applications into specified directories. * It contains a file find utility. A very nice file find utilty, in fact. If quantity of code were any measure of relative importance, Black Hole would be a file-finder with an add-on wastebin. But it wasn't intended like that. Wibble. * It puts a nice sprite on your iconbar which spins round or indulges in some other needless but rather fun activity. * It contains a bit for disposing of the junk that lots of applications leave hanging around in your module area. * Black Hole is fully compatible with Acorn's !Help. For those of you who don't want to read any more of this rubbish. Black Hole has many features. Do not be put off if it appears complicated, it's actually very simple, and you don't need to understand most of it anyway. Most of the rest of this Help file is more coherent than it has been so far. All the explanations are perfectly clear. Any inability to understand them is purely the fault of the reader and the author accepts no criticisms of his grammar. She's a very nice old lady. Wibble. **************************** I M P O R T A N T ****************************** All wastebin programs need somewhere to store their rubbish. Some wastebin programs incorporate the rubbish as part of the code. This author prefers to let users supply their own rubbish. Such user-interactiveness is part of what makes life worth living. Or something. To store rubbish, Black Hole requires a directory which is imaginatively called the 'Bin Directory'. Normally this is the directory !BlakHole2.BlackHole, but may have been changed by the person who gave you the program. If this is the case, then Black Hole will probably report an error the first time it is run informing you that the Bin Directory cannot be found. What it then does is to revert to the default Bin Directory and save this to disc so that the error does not occur again. See below for more information about the Bin Directory. If you simply cannot get the program to run (a very, very unlikely probability) then check that the application contains all the files described at the end of this file, and try deleting the files 'Options' and 'SaveOpts'. ***************************************************************************** The Bin Directory ------------------- A few words about this may be useful. Then again, they may not. But you never know unless you try. 1) Files copied to the bin directory are placed in a subdirectory called xxxx_yy_zz where xxxx is the year (eg 1993) ,yy is the month and zz is the day of the month. Clicking Select over the iconbar icon opens the directory for today if it exists, otherwise the root bin directory is opened. ************************************************************************** ** New Bin Directory Format ** ** NOTE - this has changed from versions prior to 1.15, where the year ** ** came last. With the date this way round, the directories appear in ** ** cronological order in the filer window and the menu, which is much ** ** prettier. (Thank you James Miller). ** ** If your bin directory contains any subdirectories in the old format, ** ** Black Hole will give you the option to convert them into the new ** ** format. If you select 'NO' to this option, then no auto-deletion will** ** not take place. This will only happen if you have auto-deletion ON. ** ** I'll explain what auto-deletion means later. Promise. ** ************************************************************************** 2) When copying to the bin directory, Black Hole will go by the fastest possible route - i.e. it will rename files if possible as this is faster than copying and then deleting. However, if 'Force' is not set, then Black Hole must first copy and then delete files as Rename ignores the access status of files. This results in two Filer Action windows appearing one after the other. 3) Any files or directories placed in the ROOT bin directory which do not have names of the form "xxxx_yy_zz" will be deleted next time Black Hole is run. 4) If you have Andrew Hersee's Filer2 and the WimpSprite module, then the current bin directory will be represented by a picture of a dustbin in the bin directory filer window. This is utterly pointless, but it gives you another reason to use Black Hole. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get on with it man! Pressing the menu button over the BlackHole icon produces a standard menu with several options: Info ==> Leads to a window containing information about the program. Config.. Opens a window containing the configuration. Files and directories dragged to the BlackHole icon will be wiped subject to these options. There are also options for controlling other aspects of the program. See below for an explanation. The Options window can also be opened by pressing the right mouse button over the iconbar icon. Contents ==> Leads to a submenu allowing you to perform five operations on the contents of the Bin Directory. These five options all have a submenu. This contains the entry 'All' followed by the names of any subdirectories set up for one day's working. Selecting All makes the action apply to the whole bin. Selecting one directory applies to only that day. Clicking on the entry in the Contents menu is equivalent to selecting 'All'. If the bin directory is empty, this entry will appear in light grey and will read "No Contents" Destroy : Unconditionally wipes everything. There is a confirmation window before this happens. Count : Counts the contents. Info : Reads the contents of the Bin and displays their names, sizes, and types in a window. Clicking SELECT on a filename in this window will open the parent directory of that file. Cliking MENU opens a menu like that described below under 'File Finder'. Squash : Uses the RISC OS 3 Squash module to compress all the files in the bin, thus making them take up less disc space. The file 'Squash' from inside the !Squash application must be present in the current library (ie %) (see user guide under library). Open : Will open the bin directory selected from the submenu. Selecting 'All' will open all the subdirectories. The memory allocated to the menu of subdirectories is sufficient for 40, which should be adequate for most people. Any more directories will be ignored. Wipe Drive==> Leads to a window containing the names of any adfs floppy drives fitted, and also the RAM disc, if present. Selecting one of these will cause the disc in the selected drive to be wiped of all its contents. There is a confirmation window before this happens, where clicking on 'No' will abort the operation. If you want to rename the disc, the new name can be entered in the submenu off this menu. Leaving this submenu blank will keep the same name for the disc. This menu will also recognise Brian Brunswick's MemFS filer if it is present. Auto Saver.. Opens the Auto File Saver window. See below for an explanation of this feature. Find File ... Opens the File Finder window, which can be used to search a directory structure for all files of a particular name or type. See below for a fuller explanation. Module Kill > See below for an explanation of this rather violent sounding option. Quit Quits the Black Hole ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Config Window: ================== This window is divided into two sections. The options are contained within the scrollable section of the window. The outside portion of the window contains two buttons - click OK to close the window, or Save to store the current settings as permanent defaults. You can also drag the resize box to alter the height of the window. This will stop people with large screen modes (and strange squinty eyes) from complaining, which happened quite a lot. But then, you'd complain if you couldn't read your screen properly. I LIKE mode 27. The scrollable panel is divided into four sections. These are: Default Wipe Options: --------------------- These icons control the way Black Hole deletes files dragged to its icon. Black Hole uses the standard RISC OS 3 Filer Action window so that a Black Hole wipe operation will appear the same as any other desktop delete operation. Confirm: Prompts for confirmation of all deletions. Force: Forces deletion of locked objects. Verbose: Displays information on each object deleted. Retain Structure: If this icon is selected, then only directory contents will be deleted. All directories will remain intact, even if empty. Copy Options: ------------- These icons control the wastebin aspect of Black Hole. Retain Copies: Turning this off disables the wastebin aspect of Black Hole - ie it will not copy any files to its bin directory. Dragging a file or selection of files to the Black Hole while holding down Ctrl will turn this option off for those files. Delete Copies After: If you use 'Retain Copies', then files are not actually deleted, they are just moved into the Bin directory where they will remain until you do something about it. This option allows Black Hole to do something about it for you. If you select this option, then files in the Bin Directory will be kept there for the specified number of days, then deleted for good. Squash on Shutdown: Retained copies can take up a lot of disc space, and it is helpful if you can compress them. This option allows Black Hole to do this for you. When this option is selected and you do a 'Shutdown' of the desktop (i.e. Ctrl-Shift-F12), Black Hole will go through today's bin and Squash all its contents before allowing the desktop to shut down. It will only do this if something has been added to the bin. Cute, innit? This option also applies if you select 'Quit' from Black Hole's iconbar menu. The file 'Squash' from inside the !Squash application must be present in the current library for this to operate. Note that this does not mean you have to take a printout of the file to the big building down the road with all the books in. Oh no. You can get someone to do that bit for you. And if you beleived that then I suggest you look in your user guide under 'Library'. If you can read. Wibble. Bin Location The Black Hole Bin directory is, by default, the directory !BlakHole2.BlackHole but this can be changed if desired. To do this, enter the pathname of the directory you wish to use into this box. Pressing RETURN immediately or clicking on the OK icon will make your new directory the Bin Directory. Dragging a directory to the options window will insert the pathname of that directory as the new Bin Directory and make the change current. Leaving the box empty will cause the default to be restored. Clicking select on the iconbar icon opens the current Bin Directory. The 'Empty' or 'Occupied' message below the iconbar icon applies to this directory, as does the 'Delete Copies After' option, if the new bin location is saved permanently. Misc: ----- Spin: When the pointer is over a BlackHole window or its iconbar icon, the icon will spin round. On an ARM 2 in some screen modes this can cause flicker which can be irritating. This option is therefore provided for those people who don't like their Black Holes to spin. Clock: Turning this on will cause a small digital clock to appear on the iconbar next to the pallette icon. This is here for gratuitous showing off reasons only and it is accurate only to ± 1 minute or thereabouts. You can also select whether to have a 12 or 24 hour clock. Sprites: The iconbar sprites used for the animation of the Black Hole can be changed very easily. (Black Hole is supplied with four sets of sprites.) Clicking the left button over the arrow next to this option opens a menu containing the names of the current sprite files. Select one to change the sprites. To define your own sprites, you need a sprite file containing nine frames of animation named !black0 through !black8 inclusive. Mode 12 sprites should be 34 x 17 pixels. Mode 20 sprites should be 34 x 34. Save the sprite file into the directory !BlakHole2.Sprites and it will appear on the Sprites menu. You can open this directory by clicking on the 'Open Dir' icon. The standard RISC OS 3 *IconSprites convention is used for these files; i.e. the same animation can have low res. (Mode 12), high res. (Mode 20) and high res. monochrome sprites defined. The Mode 12 sprites should be saved as whatever you want to call them, the mode 20 ones should have the same name with a 22 appended. Black Hole will ignore any files ending in 22 or 23 on its sprite menu, but RISC OS 3 will automatically select the correct one for the current mode. The default sprites (BlakHole) are defined this way. If you select the 'Update on mode change' option, then Black Hole will automatically update its sprites to suit the new resolution when you change to a new screen mode, subject to a suitable sprite file being available. Menu Font: Selecting this causes Black Hole to use an outline font for the text in its menus. In my opinion, these look far nicer than the normal system font and as they're built in to RISC OS 3, why shouldn't they be used? The fonts definitely look best in a hi-res mode so this icon is provided to allow you to turn them off if you don't like them. Remember that if you do use fonts, you will need a small font cache - 32K is more than adequate. Clock Font: Similar to the above but controls the use of fonts in the iconbar clock. Later on I will mention how you can customize Black Hole to use different fonts in the menus and the clock. To use the WIMP font turn this icon OFF. Auto Saver Options: ------------------- These two options refer to the Auto Saver part of Black Hole which is described more fully below. Confirm before Saving: This will ask whether you are sure before saving anything. It will also tell you if the file already exists. Open Destination when Saved: This will open the destination directory when a file is saved into it using the Auto Saver. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Auto Saver. =============== How many times have you started to drag a file from the save box of some application, only to find you can't see the directory where you want to put the file? Never? Skip this bit, it's not for you. All the time? Ahh, then worry no longer. This bit was written for you (and me). The autosaver allows you to set up beforehand a list of filetypes and which pathnames to save them to. Then by dragging the file to the Black Hole from the application's Save As box, it will be saved to the specified path. To cut a long story marginally less long, an example: Suppose you always save Text files into a directory called adfs::4.$.Textfiles. Select the Autosaver option from BlackHole and type FFF (the filetype for text files) in the Filetype box. Type the pathname into the Destination box. From now on, if you drag a textfile from the "Save as:" box of Edit (or any application which can output data as a textfile) to the BlackHole icon, it will be saved to the specified pathname. (Note: a filename must be specified in the application's Save As box.) This can be done for any filetype. In other words, you can specify a pathname for a particular file type. If you then 'save' a file of that type 'into' Black Hole, it will stick the specified pathname in front of the filename and save the file. This only applies when you drag a file FROM THE SAVE BOX OF AN APPLICATION. If you drag a file from a directory viewer to the Autosaver window, it's type will be inserted in the window. Dragging a directory to the Autosaver window inserts its pathname. You can also type the name of the file type (eg Text instead of FFF) into the Filetype box. Clicking on the arrow button next to this icon will open a filetype menu from which you can select one. If there is no path set up for a filetype dragged to the icon, it will be saved to the current Black Hole Bin directory. If you have more than one path set up for one filetype, then the one used will be EITHER the one currently displayed in the AutoSaver window (even if it is not visible on screen) OR if no path for that filetype is displayed, then it will be the one highest in the list. If a file already exists with the pathname given, it will be overwritten. To make the settings in this window permanent, click on the Save button. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The File Finder. ================ The file finder can be used to find files (surprise!) and directories (because I couldn't be bothered telling it not to). Enter the path you wish to search in the 'Search Path' icon. This directory and all its subdirectories will be searched for files and directories with names and/or filetypes matching those specified in the 'Search For:' section. Multiple search paths (including the names of floppy discs) can be specified by separating them with a backslash (a "\"). For example, you could enter adfs::4.$.Apps\adfs::4.$.Games. The filer will prompt for disc insertion if necessary. I hope. Similarly, you can enter multiple search names in the 'Name(s) :' box. Again use "\" as a separator. A maximum of 10 names can be entered, and they can contain wildcards. The wildcards accepted are the standard RISC OS ones - # for any one character, * for zero or more characters. If you want to search for one particular file type, this can also be entered. You can enter either the number (eg AFF) or the name (eg draw) of the filetype. Unlike earlier versions of this program, the Filetype box is no longer case sensitive and will now accept, for example, both 'draw' and 'Draw'. This works both separately and in conjunction with the Name(s). If no type is entered, all files matching the Name(s) will be listed. Dragging a directory to this window will add it to the path list, putting a "\" in if one is not already there. Dragging a file to the window will make the type of that file the current search type. The filetype menu can be opened by clicking on the arrow icon. The 'size' box allows you to search for files of a particular size, or files less than or greater than a certain size. The default setting is '>0 bytes' which will list all files >=0 bytes in size, i.e. everthing. This is useful if you want to find out which files are taking up all the space on your hard disc, for instance. You must specify an operator to go with the number, i.e. <, >, or =. The program will compare the size of the found files (bytes) with your entry in the size box: <size of file>.<user entry>. If the mathematical statement is TRUE (ie 50000>400) then the file will be included in the list. If the statement is mathematically invalid or false (ie 500000<=>=400 or 4>100) then the file will be ignored. If you omit an operator, the program inserts an =. Leaving this box blank makes the program default to >0. You can use other standard operators, such as AND or NOT, but this will, I imagine, be of somewhat limited use. The button icons in this window control the following: Case Sensitive: If this is selected, then the search becomes case sensitive, i.e. entering 'Help' as the filename will find files called 'Help' but not 'help'. Open Viewer: Will open the directory viewer containing the found file. List Details: Will list the files found, their types and sizes in a window. Clicking SELECT on a filename in this window will open the parent directory of that file. Clicking MENU over an entry produces a menu with five options: Open Parent : The same as clicking 'SELECT' Run File/Run App/Open Dir : Context sensitive to the type of item clicked over. Squash/Unsquash : Acorn's 'Squash' thingy again. This only works on files. Bin File/Bin App/Bin Dir : Perform action on the item exactly as if it had been dragged to the iconbar icon. There is a confirmation window first. Destroy : Confirmation window followed by unconditional deletion. This menu is also available when you do a Contents=>Info from the iconbar menu, except that the 'Bin' option is unavailable. Move to Bin: This acts only on files, not directories. It will move found files into the current Bin Directory, overwriting any file already exisiting with that name. Note that this can be rather dangerous, and that because of this there is a confirmation window before the search actually starts. Fast: Normally, Black Hole informs you of what it is doing during a search - it shows the directory it is currently searching and the number and total size of files found. Displaying this information slows the program down a tad, so by selecting 'Fast' you can stop it wasting its time. Archives: Under RISC OS, archives cannot be read without the software used to create them.However, David Pilling's 'SparkFS' and Mark Smith's 'ArcFS' both allow archives to be read like directories and hence to be searched. ArcFS allows you to read 'Spark' archives, while SparkFS allows a wide range of different archives to be read. The three icons in this box control what BlackHole does when it encounters an archive. 'Ignore' will treat the archive as a file. 'Use ArcFS' will use ArcFS (if you have it) to access and search Spark archives. 'Use SparkFS' will use SparkFS (if you have it) to access and search all the types of archive that your copy of SparkFS is configured to use. To use these options, the relevant program must be either running or have been 'seen' by the filer. If SparkFS is running, then 'Use SparkFS' will be the only option, because that's how SparkFS works - if it's running, archives become transparent and behave exactly like directories. Allegedly. ('Spark' and 'SparkFS' are copyright David Pilling and have no connection with Fat German Productions.) ('ArcFS' is copyright Mark Smith and has no connection with Fat German Productions.) As an example - if you want to search the directories 'adfs::4.$.apps' and 'adfs::4.$.graphics' for any files of type FFF with names containing 'text': Type adfs::4.$.apps\adfs::4.$.graphics into the search path box. Type *text* into the Name box and select case sensitivity as appropriate. Now type FFF (or Text) into the type box. Finally hit RETURN or click on GO. The GO button becomes an Abort button for the duration of the search. Clicking on this button at any time during a search will stop the search and display the results. If you leave both the name and type boxes blank, then all the files in the specified search path(s) will be listed - Black Hole defaults to a "*" for the search name. The number of files found is displayed during the search at the bottom of the window. Unless you have selected 'Move to Bin', this also includes directories. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Module Kill. ============ One of the things I find annoying about many applications (Computer Concepts please note) is that when you quit them they leave all their junk behind in the RMA. My RISC OS 3 BJ10 turbodriver leaves 8 modules behind. This obviously uses up a fair proportion of the RMA. This is what Module Kill is all about. The submenu has three entries. These may be the only entries, or there may be some more below a dotted line. Whatever. The third entry is 'Name'; Moving right off this gives you a writable menu into which you can type the name of a module. Black Hole will then kill this module. Be careful when doing this! The second entry is 'Minimize'. When you select this, Black Hole will attempt to reduce the size of the module area to a minimum. Usually it fails because the MEMC isn't violent enough. The first option is 'Open Dir', and this is where the fun starts. Selecting 'Open Dir' opens a directory. Surprised? There may be a few files in this directory, or there may not be. It doesn't matter. What is this directory for? Right. What you need to do is to find an application which leaves some modules behind when you quit it. Do this by pressing F12, typing 'Modules' and noting the name of the last module in the list. Now return to the desktop, run then quit your application, and look again at the module list. If the app. has left any modules behind they will be tacked on the bottom of the list. Make a note of the names of these modules. Now go back to the desktop and create a text file (using Edit, say) containing a list of these module names, one module per line. Save this file, in the directory you opened from the menu, with a meaningful name. Get the Module Kill menu up again. Your file will now be on the menu under the dotted line. Selecting the entry for your file will cause Black Hole to attempt to Kill all the modules listed in that file, then to minimize the RMA. It is usually successful at the first bit, but the second bit often causes it problems. Don't worry, it won't crash (Says he confidently). The dangerous bit is if you use Module Kill while the relevant app. is still running. My advice is 'Don't - It's not fun.' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: ====== 1) Rather than using Squash, which is rather slow, you may like to compress your Retained Copies by another method. This is most easily done if you own Computer Concept's Compression. You can simply make the Bin Directory a CFS directory. Provided CFS is loaded before Black Hole on bootup, everything will be OK. This has the added advantage that files are compressed as they are added to the bin. For example, you could make the bin directory CFS#adfs::IDEDisc4.$.!BlakHole2.BlackHole. You can probably do this with SparkFS as well. 2) Dragging the contents of the Bin directory to the iconbar icon WILL delete them if force is off, but will not if force is on. This is because force MOVES files, but force off copies then deletes. If Retain Copies is off, or Ctrl is pressed, then they will be deleted whatever. 3) Black Hole treats DOS partitions as normal directories for all purposes. If a DOS partition is deleted with 'Retain Copies' set, then the files are retained but in a directory with the same name as the partition, not as a partition. This probably applies to archives if SparkFS is running, but I haven't tried it so don't quote me. 4) If you want to customize Black Hole to use fonts other than the defaults, then load the file 'Messages' into a text editor (eg !Edit) and change the relevant lines in there. It's self-explanatory and very easy really, honest. Note that the fonts listed in this file will only be applied if the 'Menu Font' and/or 'Clock Font' icon in the config window is on. 5) Observant people (those with one or more eyes and a functioning brain) may notice that the file finder searches backwards down a group of directories, i.e. if your root directory has five subdirectories such as !Boot, !Fonts, !System, !Scrap, and Apps, the file finder will search them in reverse order. This is simply because of the way it works and I've not bothered to change it because it means that almost everything gets searched before !Fonts, which really doesn't need searching anyway, and so the search can be manually aborted at this point. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brief Explanation of Contents of !BlakHole2. ============================================ !Boot and !Run are the usual stuff. !Help is this file. !RunImage, Init, Setup, and Overlay are the program - it's split into chunks so I can get more program into the same memory. !Sprites and !Sprites22 are the filer sprites. BlackHole is the default bin directory. icons contains the sprites used in the windows. Messages contains the Help Text and other such nonsense. Sprites contains the sprite files for the animation of the iconbar icon. By default these are BlakHole, BlakHole22, Recycle, Burn, and Shredder. Temp is a directory used when directory structure needs to be retained. Templates are...... the templates!! Options is where the Config. options are saved. Saveopts is the options for the Auto Saver. You can alter this using Edit if you like, just save a sample file to find out the format. If these last two files are not present, Black Hole will use its own defaults for all the options. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes - The Sequel (more random ramblings) ================== This program is far from perfect. The reasons for this are many and varied and the word 'incompetence' appears in them frequently. A large part of it is because I learnt to program RISC OS by staring vacantly at other people's programs until the sugar of understanding began to crystallise in the syrup of my brain. (Sorry, too much psychedelic music.) By the way, I can strongly recommend the method of programming I use: 1) Decide what it is you want to do. 2) Find a program that already does it. 3) 'Adapt' the code in that program. 4) Have a coffee. This works very successfully and probably explains why I've got three apparrently identical procedures, each of which is absolutely crucial to the program. Ho hum. Please note, however, that this is not an admission of plagiarism. Other people's programs are a great source of PRM-type information, and are usually far more easily understandable than Acorn literature. The next bit of this file is a load of boring pseudo-legal crap which I put in because everybody else does, so it seemed like a good idea. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: =========== This program is supplied 'as is' with no guarantee of its suitability for any purpose. I will not be held responsible for any loss of data occuring through the use or misuse of this program. I will also not be held responsible for anything else you may do after accidentally deleting your valuable files. If you're worried about losing things, then use 'Retain Copies' - that's what it's for. If anything goes wrong with Black Hole please let me know. Preferably gently. Then peel me off the ceiling and sit me down in fron of my computer with an intravenous drip of caffeine whilst quitely phoning for an ambulance. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Public Domain Notice: ===================== Black Hole is released by courtesy of the Fat German in association with the Great Green Gollywog and his minions. It may be freely copied and used, as long as the following conditions are met: a) That this notice is distributed unchanged with every copy. b) That the application is supplied with unchanged versions of all the files described above. (If you do make modifications to any part of BlackHole, please do not distribute them without contacting me first, at the address below.) c) No charge is made for the distribution. Public domain libraries may make a small charge to cover distribution costs. It is highly unethical, not to mention dishonest to make a charge for software which programmers have intended to be freely distributed, especially if none of that profit finds its way to the programmer. d) That you all smile and have a good time. All copyright is reserved. You may not use any part of this application in any project which is to be sold for profit without my express permission in writing. If you wish to use pieces of my code in your own pd programs then please feel free to do so, provided these programs are not intented for sale. I say this mainly because my telling you not to do so would not stop you, but also becasue I learned programming by nicking and splicing bits of other people's programs, so why shouldn't you? If you do use my code, a credit would be nice. Money would be even better. Anyone out there feeling particularly generous can send me a £5.00 (ono) registration fee and a disc, (well, actually a disc and a nice letter saying how wonderful my program is would probably do the trick,) and I will send them free upgrades whenever I write one, possibly accompanied by any PD applications I can get my grubby little mitts on. Come to that, a picture of you smiling contentedly watching the icon spin round would make me very well disposed towards you. And believe me, you want that. The Black Hole is not merely a program - it's a living, breathing entity that will become very nasty if you annoy it and has a very nasty sting. No, hang on, that's a wasp. The Black Hole is a piece of code which runs in a 64K wimpslot and never crashes unless I specifically programmed it that way. But that doesn't sound as impressive. Wibble. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks go to: ============= All the programmers who unknowingly taught me how to program RISC OS; I've only just bought my PRMs, so looking at other people's code was the quickest way to learn. Robin Watts - The finer details of one or two SYS calls and the associated routines for extracting the useful data from them were purloined from his excellent !Larger - 'Sticky Backdrop Extraordinaire', which I spend most of my time beta- testing for him. (I've got RISC OS 3, which has a built-in sticky backdrop, but it's crap, so !Larger is a most welcome burden on my hard disc.) Robin was also never too busy to give advice or to let me peruse his PRMs. (Well, hardly ever.....). The routines for doing the Config. window as a composite window also came from Robin. Robin's Addresses are: 217 Waterhouse Moor, Harlow, Essex CM18 6BW, OR St. Catherine's College, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UJ or by Janet: m90rjw@uk.ac.oxford.ecs James Miller - Thanks to James for mailing me with a bug in the File Finder and informing me of the existence of the Boot File Creation message. (Why do I always find the bugs the day AFTER I release the software? This must be nature's way of ensuring that software always produces offspring - a new version is always required to fix the bugs in the previous version. Evolution in action!) Emmet Spier - Emmet's Help file said that he didn't mind people nicking his code, provided he got a credit, so I wholeheartedly and ruthlessly butchered out the code for a filetype menu from his !Set-Type. Then I decided that it took up too much memory so I vastly simplified it to remove the sprites. Then I found a new way of doing it so I put the sprites back in. I can't remember whether any of Emmet's code is still in there, but if it is thanks are due to him. Jason Williams - For designing the Shredder sprites. Very nice they are too. Mark Kempster - For the Burn sprites. They're cool. Er, hot. Steve Singer - I didn't copy any code from Steve, but it was he who complained that he wouldn't even look at my proggy if the iconbar icon didn't spin round. And he also wrote Bloxed, a game which may be the future cause of failure in Finals for half of St. Catherine' College. He also showed me the NeXT workstation which was running the program which gave me the inspiration for Black Hole. And now he tells me he never uses Wastebin programs..... Dominic Symes - For writing !Zap, the best editor around. Even if it does crash quite a lot... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Differences between Black Hole and Black Hole II version 1.16 ============================================================= The original Black Hole ran on RISC OS 2 and RISC OS 3. As RISC OS 3 is now accepted as standard on Acorn machines I decided to make use of some of its new features in this new version of the program. 1) All Filer operations are now run by Filer_Action. The advantages of this are: i) A dramatic speed increase when deleting large numbers of files. ii) Any errors which occur are trapped by the filer and should not crash Black Hole as happened very occasionally in the original (I can't think of everything.....) iii) More than one operation can be carried out simultaneously. The disadvantages are: i) When copying to the bin, Filer_Action ignores the access status of files. Thus if Force is off, you still get all the locked files copied although they aren't deleted. However, I don't anticipate many people using this program with Force off. ii) For Retain Structure, the original would simply not delete any directories. Filer_Action cannot do this, so the structure has first to be copied, then written back once the deletion has finished. iii) Copies cannot be squashed as they are copied. This version has a Squash option on a menu and an automatic 'Squash on Shutdown' option. 2) The file finder has been dramatically speeded up and Archive compatibililty included. Wildcarded searches are now possible. Note: This version has been speeded up relative to versions of BlakHole2 prior to 1.10. 3) DOS partitions are recognised and treated as directories. 4) The bin structure has been changed to have a separate subdirectory for each day of use. This allows more organisation of your rubbish (which may or may not be useful) and also allows the auto deletion to be much faster, which will stop people from shouting at me. 5) Because people complained about my options and radio icons, I've taken them out. The program now uses whichever icons are standard on your machine. 6) 3d icons have been adopted. I have no idea what the Acorn guidelines are, so I've adopted those used by Computer Concepts and Simon Huntingdon's Interface module, since Acorn seem to have copied their icons. (Note: No relation between S.H. and CC is implied.......(got to cover myself!)) 7) The Info window has got sillier. 8) I have added an option to use outline fonts in the menus. I like this, but some people prefer consistency - that's why it's an option. Also it does NOT look good in mode 12.... Also, Acorn's latest WIMP actually DOES use an outline font instead of the system font. (We knew you'd get there in the end, Acorn!) 9) The iconbar sprites change from low-res to high-res (and vice-versa) automatically when you change mode (provided you select the option). This is done simply by *IconSprites, which requires disc access so I made it optional. If you are using Andrew Hersee's Filer2 with the WimpSprites module, then the command *WimpSprites will be used instead, which will ensure that the thing still works. 10) A slightly more sensible (ie non-random) version numbering system has been introduced. 11) When not doing anything, BlakHole2 takes up less than 1% of available background time, even with the Clock and Spin selected. 12) Black Hole responds to the Task Manager's "Create Boot File" message. In other words, if you save a Desktop Boot file from the Task Manager while Black Hole is loaded, a line will be inserted in the file to run Black Hole. Thus Black Hole will be run automatically on bootup. (Thanks to James Miller for this one.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music played while programming: =============================== Too many to name all, but these and more: Brian Eno, Magma, King Crimson, Amon Düül II, Jethro Tull, Genesis, Roxy Music, The Soft Machine, The Incredible String Band, Ozric Tentacles, Can, Caravan, Led Zeppelin, Van Der Graaf Generator, Deep Purple..... This probably explains quite a lot. (Some of this stuff is simply not music to work to. I feel I've comitted sacriledge and this program is it...) The Fat German, 1992 (He's not fat and he's not German either) ================================================== Mark Greenwood, 122 Miswell Lane, Tring, Herts. HP23 4EU Thanks to Dave for inventing Fat German.