Fish 'n' More 2/fishmore-publicdomainlibraryvol.ii1991xetec.iso/disks/disk453.lzh/Quick/Quick!.doc

Text File | 1991-02-15 | 7KB | 149 lines

                           Quick! documentation

     Quick! is a utility program specifically targeted at hard drive users
to eliminate the frustration of launching programs on the Amiga. It
eliminates the need to:

     1) Open Workbench windows.
     2) Remember and type in long pathnames to executables.

     This program is placed in the Public Domain by Adspec Programming as
partial repayment to all the other Amiga Freeware/Shareware writers.
Permission has been granted to Fred Fish to distribute this program and doc
file in his famous "Amiga Library Disk" collection. Adspec programming makes
no claims as to the fitness of this program. In other words, we aren't
responsible to you if it crashes your hard drive, burns your RAM chips
(including CHIP rams), etc.....

     Quick! MUST be started from a CLI-type environment. No provision has
been made to start it as a "process". This includes IconX! Also, when
started from a CLI (or Shell), the original CLI must remain open. What did
you expect for a "freebie"?

     When started, Quick! looks for a file in the SYS:S directory named
"quickmenu.def". If found, the program then proceeds to open a tiny window
with a gadget that looks like an exclamation point (!). It is placed in the
upper right-hand corner of the screen. It does not block the standard
Intuition gadgets for Screen front/back manipulation. It has also been
offset a little more to the left to allow other gadgets to be used in
640x200-sized windows (such as "zoom" gadgets) without interference. This
window/gadget combination allows Quick! to appear in front of other windows
on the Workbench screen if so desired. Since there are no depth arrangement
gadgets for Quick!, you must arrange your other windows accordingly. Usually
this is a simple case of sending windows behind Quick!. When made active
(with a LMB click), it will then provide 6 columns of menus.

     The first menu is "Quick! Menu" and has only one item attached - "Quit
Quick!" and serves as the only means to exit the program. The last five
menus are user-configured and are labelled "Utilities1" through
"Utilities5". Each menu contains 12 items for a total of 60 user-
configurable items. The manner in which the user configures the menus is
directly related to the "quickmenu.def" file. This file is an ASCII file
with no imbedded control codes, tabs, etc. It is suggested that you only use
ASCII codes 32 through 126. These are the "printable" codes and you
shouldn't need any others.

                                SETTING UP

     First, copy Quick! to you favorite cubby-hole. The SYS:C directory is
recommended for convenience since AmigaDOS always looks there without any
additional PATH assignments anyway. Next, copy the file "quickmenu.def" to
your SYS:S directory.
     Once both files are in place, all that is required is to edit the
"quickmenu.def" file to reflect what is actually on YOUR hard drive rather
than mine.

                          Editing "quickmenu.def"

     Once everything is in place, editing the file is a snap. Quick! reads
the file based on pairs of lines. This is the most crucial point to editing
the file. If not followed correctly, you will see strange things in the menu
strips. Each line must be terminated with a linefeed (by pressing the
"return" key on the keyboard). The odd-numbered lines may not exceed 11
characters due to the way in which Quick! will interpret the file. This
first line is what will show up in the menu as an "item" that subsequently
will be selected by the mouse. By the way, line numbers start with line
number 1.

     The second line (and subsequent even-numbered lines) is the one that
Quick! uses to execute commands. Any program that may be run from the CLI
environment will also run from Quick!. For those of you "seasoned" CLI
people, you are probably already aware that there are 3 ways to run an
executable from AmigaDOS:

1> "filename"

This method is the most frequently used if you want to single-task a program
or the program automatically detaches itself from the CLI.

1> run "filename"

This method will run the program as a separate task, inheriting the original
CLI window for output.

1> execute "batch_filename"

This final method is one of my favorites because Quick! only knows how to
run ONE TEXT LINE from the "quickmenu.def" file. This allows batch file
processing when you need more than one line. One good example of this is
when you need to be "CD'd" to a certain directory before starting a program.
This would then require 2 CLI commands instead of one and would require the
use of batch file processing. One natural question comes to mind - "where do
I put the batch file?" Since my S: directory has enough junk in it, I
created a special directory inside the S: directory named "quick". Now when
I want to execute a batch file to be started from Quick!, I just use the
following line:

execute s:quick/batch_filename.script

     Let's get a little more specific. Suppose my hard drive partition dh0:
contains a path to WorkPerfect as follows: dh0:Text/WorkPerfect/WorkPerfect.
Let's also suppose that I keep my text files in a different place:
dh1:Text_Files/WP. And let's get really outrageous and suppose that
WorkPerfect will show me the files in its file requester from the directory
that I'm "CD'd" to. Here's how we would proceed with the "quickmenu.def"
file. This will be our first entry, so line #1 will be the name that we want
to appear as our menu item. The word "WorkPerfect" is 11 characters long, so
we can use it for a menu item. Line #2 will contain the directions to Quick!
on how to launch the program. We want to execute a batch file, so here's
the first 2 lines of the file:

WorkPerfect
execute S:quick/WorkPerfect.script

     We would then save this 2 line file as "s:quickmenu.def" and create the
batch file named "WorkPerfect.script" like this:

cd dh1:Text_Files/WP
run > nil:  dh0:Text/WorkPerfect/WorkPerfect -s

     Then save this file in the S:quick directory. Notice the "-s" option in
the batch file. Since Quick! uses a linefeed character to determine what
should be used to start a new task, anything before the linefeed is fair
game to be used as command line flags. Once these 2 files are created, go to
a CLI and type:

1> run Quick!

     You'll see your menu item "WorkPerfect" and it's ready to execute.
Highlight the item, let go of the mousebutton and you're off! You should get
a pretty good idea of what the program will do by looking at the files that
I have included.

                                  Support

     C'mon now. This is P.D. Well, okay. My name is Shane Earl and I wrote
the docs for this little beauty. I will answer questions about this program
through written correspondence ONLY! Got that? Good. Do NOT bother Adspec
Programming with problems, questions or money (Sorry Greg. I put more time
in on the docs than you did for the whole program, so I get to keep the
money. Yeah, right! :). Anyway, I won't guarantee that I'll be at the
following address forever, but as of January 1991, this is it:

Salem Amiga Users Group
Attention: Shane Earl
P.O. Box 7023
Boardman, OH 44512-7023

All rights reserved, blah, blah, blah.......