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Chapter Seven
The Environment Editor ..........................73
Desktop .........................................73
Display Mode ....................................74
Display Options .................................76
Lister Display ..................................77
Lister Options ..................................79
Output Window ...................................80
Palette .........................................81
User Pens ...................................82
Problems with Screen Modes and User Pens ....82
The Environment Editor
The Environment provides user control over the visual display elements of
the Directory Opus 5 display. This includes the Display Mode, Display
Options, the layout of the file Listers, Colour Palette and more.
@endnode
@node "Desktop"
Desktop
This editor lets you change the look and operation of the desktop.
*** See Fig 7-01 ***
Distinct icon positions: When turned on, all icon snapshots do not
affect the main icon position, but instead are
stored with the environment file. When turned
off, the standard icon position is used.
Directory Opus 5 73
Don't cache icon images: Icon caching improves the speed of displaying
icon mode and icon action mode Listers.
However, if you find this causes problems, you
may disable it. This setting is only checked
at Opus startup - you will need to quit and
restart Opus after altering this setting.
Don't remap icons: This setting allows you to stop Opus from remapping
eight colour icons to the top and bottom four colours
in the palette.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The way the colours of Amiga icons are displayed has become very |
| confusing with a number of competing schemes. These differ from |
| the way the standard Workbench displays the icon colours. You may |
| have some problems with PD utilities such as MagicWB, NewIcons etc |
| depending on the exact way you have implemented your colours and |
| screen depth. With more than eight colours, the pen colours used |
| for the icon's colour can vary depending on the system you have |
| chosen. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Font: Allows you to specify the font used for the names of the icons
displayed on the desktop.
Hidden drives: By default, Opus will display an icon on the Main Window
representing each of the volumes available on your Amiga.
But, you may elect to not display them if you wish.
Simply click on the entries you wish to hide and they
will not be shown on the Main Window.
Display Mode
*** See Fig 7-02 ***
74 Directory Opus 5
The screen Display Mode requester allows you to specify the mode, size
and depth of the Directory Opus 5 screen. It displays the list of the
available display modes. The modes available will vary depending upon the
version of your Amiga Operating System and the monitors currently
installed in your system.
The characteristics of the selected display mode are shown at the bottom
of the window. There are two special items on the list:-
Workbench:Use Causes Directory Opus 5 to open a window on the
Workbench screen and not to open a custom screen. The
width and height of this window may be changed, but the
number of colours is fixed at the current Workbench depth.
Workbench:Clone Causes Directory Opus 5 to open a screen in the same
mode and exactly the same size as the Workbench screen.
The size of this screen cannot be changed, but you may
modify the number of colours.
Other user settings include :-
Width & Height: These fields allow you to specify size of the custom
screen.
Default: When this button is checked, the width or height fields can not
be changed and the field will display the default value. Un-
check this button to edit the field. When you are using
Workbench:Clone, the Default button cannot be deselected.
Colours: Select the screen depth by number of colours.
Font: Select the default screen font for the Opus 5 screen. This is the
font that is used for the screen and Lister title bars and for
requesters.
Directory Opus 5 75
Display Options
These options allow you to define whether to use a backdrop pattern or
picture on the Opus 5 Screen, and allow you to configure some of the
Workbench 'application' functions.
*** See Fig 7-03 ***
The Backdrop Pattern allows you to display backdrop patterns or pictures
in the Main Window or Listers (WB3.0+ only). The name of the preferences
file is entered into the Prefs: string gadget.
Many people use the same preferences file as used for Workbench, but you
may also have an independent setting for Opus. Opus 5.5 now allows
backdrop pictures or patterns on the Main Window as well as in Icon and
Icon Action mode Listers.
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| You cannot just enter the name of a picture file! You must use a |
| standard Amiga 'WBPatternPrefs' preferences file created by the |
| Amiga WBPattern program. |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
To create a new pattern preferences file, select the '!' gadget on the
right of the Prefs: string gadget. This will run the Amiga WBPattern
program where you may define the backdrops you wish to use. The
'workbench' field sets patterns for the Opus Main Window and the 'windows'
field sets the Listers windows. Then, 'SaveAs' your preferences under a
new name (e.g. dopus.pref), then specify this file for the Opus backdrop.
Note that the WBPattern program opens on the Workbench screen, so if you
are not running Opus as WBR, you may need to bring Opus to the front after
using it.
76 Directory Opus 5
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Backdrop pictures have their colours remapped by default. If you |
| wish the picture not to be remapped, add a '.noremap' suffix to the |
| picture name. The name of the picture itself must have the suffix, |
| not the prefs file. If the picture name ends in a ".exact" suffix, |
| Opus will tell datatypes to remap this picture using PRECISION_EXACT |
| rather than PRECISION_IMAGE. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
The Workbench emulation allows Opus 5 to intercept some of the system
calls to Workbench to provide the same functionality. The options are :-
Display AppIcons: Tells Opus 5 to display all application icons in the
Opus 5 window.
Display Tools Menu: Tells Opus 5 to add any WorkBench application menus
to a global 'Tools' menu.
Hide Bad Disks: By default, Opus 5 will show any Non-DOS disk icons (as
does Workbench). This option allows you to hide these
icons to unclutter your backdrop window.
Lister Display
This allows you to choose the default values for colours, font and format
for the Opus 5 Listers.
*** See Fig 7-04 ***
Lister Elements: Select the item then select the foreground and
background colours as desired.
Directory Opus 5 77
Status text: You can customise the Lister status bar display. Several
special sequences beginning with % are available via the
button to the right of the string requester. The special
sequences are:-
%fs - Selected file count
%ft - Total file count
%ds - Selected directory count
%dt - Total directory count
%bs - Selected byte count
%bt - Total byte count
%h[<text>]% - Hidden file count/flag
The %h sequence can work two ways. If you omit the optional <text>, then
the number of hidden files will be displayed here. If you supply the
<text> argument then it will be displayed literally instead of a number
whenever any entries are hidden, otherwise the field will be left blank.
An entry will be considered hidden if it has been filtered out by the Show
or Hide filters, if it is an icon and Filter icons has been enabled, or if
it has its H bit set and the Hidden switch has been enabled in the Lister
format requester.
As an example, this is the default status text:-
D:[%ds/%dt] F:[%fs/%ft] B:[%bs/%bt] %h*%
Select Font: From a font requester you may select the font and size you
wish to be used in the Lister display. The font selected
will be used to display all the elements in the Lister
display. Only one font can be used in a Lister.
Default Format: From the List Format requester, you may select the
default format you wish to be used whenever a new Lister
is opened.
78 Directory Opus 5
Lister Options
These options control the default size and some user actions of the Opus
file Lister.
*** See Fig 7-05 ***
Device list in new lister: When a new Lister is created, Opus 5 will
display a DeviceList in the window if this
setting is enabled. Otherwise it will be
blank.
RMB double-click editing: When selected, double-clicking the right mouse
button over a Lister will invoke the List
Format Requester. Otherwise, the right mouse
button can be used to scroll the list display
horizontally and vertically.
SimpleRefresh windows: This option tells Opus to handle the refreshing
of Lister windows rather than let it be done by
the system. Enabling this option will mean Opus
Listers will use less memory, but may be
refreshed somewhat slower.
Field Titles: This option tells Opus to display the name of each display
field at the top of the Lister when in Name mode. This
setting is global and applies to all Name mode Listers.
When field titles are displayed, clicking on the field
name will resort the list in ascending or descending order
by that field.
Always Use Snapshot Position: When a Lister is closed, Opus makes a
temporary snapshot of the size, position
and mode for the specific path displayed
in the Lister. When you next open this
same path, Opus uses this temporary
snapshot to re-display the Lister exactly
as when you last used it in this session.
Directory Opus 5 79
However, some users prefer to have Listers
always appear in a set size, position and
mode. To do this, open a Lister for the
required path and permanently snapshot the
Lister details from the Lister/Snapshot
Menu. If this option is set, whenever
Opus opens a new Lister of this path, the
permanent snapshot will always be used
instead of the temporary one.
Name Mode Popup: Enables the RMB Filetype pop-up menus in Name mode.
This are the same menus as the icon pop-up menus. They
provides access to a set of common functions plus
special functions according to the type of file and may
be further enhanced using the Filetypes system.
Default Size: Allows you to set the initial size to use when opening a
new Lister.
Output Window
This allows you to set the title and size, and device of the Output
Window used by Opus 5 to display CLI tasks and associated messages.
*** See Fig 7-06 ***
Title: This is the title name to be displayed in every output window.
Device: This is the name of the console device used for the output
window. By default this is set to CON:, but you may refer to
any other console devices which you may have installed, for
example, KingCon or KCON:.
80 Directory Opus 5
Size: To adjust the size, click on the Set button and adjust the
position and size of the window as required, then close the window
with the close window button.
Palette
The Palette displays the current colours used by the Opus 5 screen plus
any user defined colours available.
*** See Fig 7-07 ***
On its own screen, the display will show up to 16 colours depending on
the chosen screen depth. The first eight colours displayed are the Amiga
OS colours, the bottom four and top four colours from your Workbench
palette. Depending on the screen depth, you may also have up to eight
user colours.
When on Workbench, only the user colours are displayed. The actual
screen colours are determined from Workbench.
Reset: The reset button cancels any changes you may have made with the
palette requester.
Load: The load button allows you to load any saved palette preferences
file. Both Workbench 2.x and Workbench 3.x file formats are
supported.
Directory Opus 5 81
User Pens
The User Pens system provides a mechanism to make the management of
colours practical and useful under V39 of the Amiga OS. (V37 is slightly
different but Opus 5 provides similar functionality.)
With the pen allocation system of V39, it is possible to have your own
colours even when running on another program's (or the Workbench) screen.
The User Pens system allows you to define up to 8 colours which Opus 5
will attempt to allocate. You may use these on custom buttons and as the
colour of Lister elements.
You can choose how many pens to allocate, from zero to eight. If you
limit your choice to only those pens you actually need, all others are
left for other programs. As well as the optional user colours, you always
have the standard Amiga OS colours to use (4 colours under OS V37, 8 under
V 39).
You can specify the desired number of user colours with the slider
gadget. Once you have changed the number to what you want you need to
select "Use". The Opus 5 window (and screen) will be closed and re-
opened, and the new number of pens will be allocated (if possible).
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Note that you can only change the colours of these pens if they were |
| successfully allocated. If you slide the RGB sliders and nothing |
| seems to happen, that's because there were no shareable pens |
| available for Opus 5 to use. |
| |
| Also note that you cannot have any User Colours unless your screen |
| is at least 16 colours (8 under V37), since the Amiga OS grabs the |
| top and bottom four colours for itself. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Problems with Screen Modes and User Pens
With Opus 5, some users became confused when changing screen modes after
they had allocated user pens. If you have set up some user pens and
subsequently change the screen mode to one of lower depth (less colours),
where the same number of user pens cannot be allocated, Opus will still
82 Directory Opus 5
use the actual pen numbers you had selected earlier for the display. This
can cause some strange colour artefacts since these pen numbers will
'wrap-around' the number of colours available in your chosen screen mode.
Once you have changed to a screen of lower depth, Opus may not let you
change the number of user pens. This is not an error but is done by Opus
5 on purpose so as to preserve your previously defined colour selections
for later use.
If, after you have allocated user pens, you wish to swap to a screen with
fewer colours, set the User Pens back to zero before you change the screen
mode. If you have set up an system of user pens and adjusted the colours
exactly the way you want them, it is a good idea to save these Environment
settings so you may easily recover your work at a later date.
Directory Opus 5 83
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84 Directory Opus 5