The Datafile PD-CD 1 Issue 2

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Text File | 1994-09-21 | 13.8 KB | 358 lines

TreeMenu 2.70 (14 Feb 1994) --------------------------- Introduction ------------ (If you already use DirMenu/TreeMenu, look in 'History' to find a quick description of the changes since the last released version.) This utility provides an easy way to access directories/files of your disc and resource filing systems without thrashing through endless filer windows. It provides hierachical menus containing the tree structure of any of your filing systems. These menus can be opened either by clicking with <Select> on one of TreeMenu's icon-bar icons, or clicking with <Menu> on the title bar of *any* window whose title contains a filename. Alt-<Menu> clicks inside Filer windows are also detected. Choosing an item in a menu will do exactly the same thing as double-clicking it in a normal Filer window - i.e. open directories, load files, or run applications. TreeMenu just does a '*Filer_Run ...' on whatever you clicked on, so hold down <shift> to open application directories / load files into your text editor, or <ctrl> to open a directory without booting applications. Choosing a menu item with <Adjust> will keep the menu open. If a window contains a valid filename in the title, clicking <Menu> on the title-bar of the window will bring up a menu containing all the parents of the filename, and also the contents of the parent directory. Try clicking on the title bar of this window to see the contents of the '!TreeMenu' application directory. This allows you to access the directory of a file, its sub-directories, or any of its parents very easily, and also to branch out into any other part of the directory's filing system. Clicking <Menu> on the title bar of a Filer window works in a similar way. Also, TreeMenu responds to Alt-Menu clicks inside Filer windows only. When a menu is brought up by clicking on a window, there will be an extra item 'Set CSD'. Choosing this will set the Currently Selected Directory (CSD) to the title of a Filer window, or the parent directory of, for example, an !Edit window. TreeMenu comes set up to have one icon-bar icon. Clicking <Select> on it will bring up a menu containing the contents of ADFS::4 (your hard drive, if you have one), as well items leading to your Resource filing system, your scrap directory, the Currently Selected Directory (CSD) and whatever is in your floppy disc drive. Clicking <Menu> on any TreeMenu bar-icon will bring up a conventional Info/Quit menu, with these other items: Å Help loads this file into your text-editor. Å Edit !Configs loads '!Configs' into your text-editor for editing. Å Update re-scan '!Configs'. Do this if you change '!Configs' while TreeMenu is running. Options. -------- All options are set in the file '!Configs' in !TreeMenu's directory. To change the options, you should edit the file using a text editor such as !Edit. If TreeMenu is running, you will need to choose 'Update' from the normal bar-icon menu after saving the new version of '!Configs'. The file contains comments on how to specify the various parameters; it should be fairly clear how to change things, so this is just a brief guide: Things that you can change: Å Menu colours. Å Where to open iconbar menus on the screen. Å Whether to expand paths containing system variables. Å Whether to detect <Menu> clicks on window titlebars. Å Whether to detect <Menu> clicks only on Filer titlebars. Å Whether to have a 'Set CSD' item in window menus. Å Whether to reverse Select/Menu response for iconbar clicks. Å Whether to set the CSD to the chosen item if <Alt> is pressed. Å Whether to make large menus auto-scrolling. Å Number of iconbar icons. Å The contents of each bar-icon. Menu colours ------------ These are in the following order: Work foreground, Work background, Title foreground, Title background. (Normal RISC OS menu colours are: 7 0 7 2. I find a white background a bit bright on large menus.) Menu position (NORMAL, BOTTOMLEFT or TOPLEFT) -------------------------------------------- This sets where menus are open in response to clicks on the iconbar. BOTTOMLEFT - open normal height but on far left of screen TOPLEFT - open in top left corner of screen NORMAL - normal RISC OS position above the icon you clicked on. Path expansion (EXPAND or PRESERVE) ----------------------------------- If you have an iconbar menu specified like 'System:', any opened filer windows will have titles starting with 'System:' rather than the full path name. This can result in you having two filer windows open for the same directory, which can be a bit confusing. To avoid this, use EXPAND, and any filenames will be expanded before they are Filer_Run-ed. NB, FilerPatch does this automatically, so if you use it, this option will have no effect. Always have a 'Set CSD' in window menus --------------------------------------- If you turn this off (which saves a bit of space on window menus), you can force it to appear by holding down <Shift> when you click on a window titlebar. Use reversed Menu/Select buttons for iconbar clicks ? (YES or NO) ----------------------------------------------------------------- This makes Select behave like Menu, and visa-versa, when you click on an iconbar icon. This is so you can use the Menu button for both iconbar and window titlebar menus. Note that using this option makes TreeMenu inconsistant with the rest of RISC OS. Set the CSD to the chosen item if <Alt> is pressed. --------------------------------------------------- If this option is YES, !TreeMenu will set the CSD to items chosen from file/directory menus if you hold down the <Alt> key wjen you make the menu choice. !TreeMenu will beep when you set the CSD in this way. Auto-scrolling menus. --------------------- If this option is YES, !TreeMenu will automatically scroll large menus when you move the pointer to the top or bottom of the menu. If you move the pointer to the very top or bottom of the menu, it will scroll down a page at a time (as though you clicked above or below the scroll bar), otherwise it will scroll more slowly, as though you clicked on one of the scroll arrows. The contents of each bar-icon menu are a series of file paths, e.g. 'ADFS::4.$' or 'Resources:'. TreeMenu will create a menu containing each of these paths separated by gaps. In addition, you can append a '*' to a path, which will make TreeMenu add the first-level contents underneath the path. i.e. 'ADFS::4.$*' will add the contents of the root directory of your hard disc to the menu, which saves you moving to a submenu, at the expense of making the root menu bigger. You should change 'ADFS::4.$*' to contain whatever your hard disc is called, i.e. 'ADFS::<discname>.$*'. Don't append a '.' to any item. Making a separate bar-icon point to a very frequently used directory can be very convenient. This is made easier if the directory is an application which sets a system variable to its location. You can then use <...$Dir> in TreeMenu's '!Configs' file. You can create a menu of *commands by creating an application directory that contains various Obey files, and then make a TreeMenu icon wich displays this directory. Any system variables can be items in a TreeMenu menu, by specifying them in '!Configs', e.g. '@' to get at the CSD, or '<Wimp$ScrapDir>'. Note that if an item that you specified looks like a floppy disc, the Wimp will ask you to insert it each time you go to that item in the menu tree. Random nice features: --------------------- Å Configurable colours! Big white menus are a bit of an eye-sore. If you don't like the colour scheme, just alter the '!Configs' file. Å Compatible with Jens Ovesen's FilerPatch. i.e. directories which have been set to look like applications in Filer windows (bit 7 of Access set) are detected, and displayed correctly by TreeMenu. Å Files/directories which are hidden by FilerPatch (bit 6 of Access set) are displayed with fainter text, but are still selectable. Å You can go into the directory structure of image files just as though they are directories. Å Text in the menus is padded with spaces so that the highlighting is clear. I did this because the Wimp doesn't highlight text+sprite menu-icons very well. Å Being able to bring up a menu for a Filer windor by clicking <Menu> on the title bar means you can have fewer Filer windows open to save desktop clutter, but still have easy access to all your files. Å You can set the number of icon-bar icons to be zero. This will save space on the icon bar, but clicking on Filer windows will still work. You will have to quit TreeMenu from the Task Manager window if you do this. Å TreeMenu is set to expand pathnames prior to Filer_Run-ing them, i.e. system variables and '@' (representing the CSD) in the path name are expanded. This uses the SWI "OS_FSControl". You can turn this option off by altering '!Configs'. NB. I think Jens Ovesen's FilerPatch 1.13 automaticaly expands filenames in Filer_Run commands, so this option won't make any difference if you use FilerPatch. Å You can turn off the 'Set CSD' item in window menus by altering '!Configs', but holding down <Shift> when clicking on the title bar of a window will force this item to appear regardless of the '!Configs' option. This is useful if you hardly ever use the CSD, so don't need this item accept on rare occasions. Å The facility to open a menu by clicking on (for example) a text editor window is dead useful - e.g. You're editing a file with the window full-size, and want to look at a second file in the same directory. Without TreeMenu, you have to move the window, find its Filer window, then double-click on the second file etc. With TreeMenu, you simply click on the big window's title, and choose the second file directly. This makes a big difference when programing in C for example, where source files are typically in the same directory. Another example: you might want to look at TreeMenu's 'History' file when viewing this !Help text, so just click <Menu> on the titlebar to bring up the !TreeMenu directory, and choose 'History'. Å Auto-scrolling of menus. This is a very useful option. I think that Acorn should have made menus auto-scrolling from the start - it is a real nuisance to have to drag the scrollbar of a menu in order to get to choose an item. Most menus on the Arc are small enough to fit on one screen, so I s'pose its not too much of a problem normally. !TreeMenu often has big menus, so Acorn's oversight is more telling. I have had no problems with the autoscrolling, but it could conceivably cause problems, so I have allowed the user to turn it off. The autoscrolling isn't particulaly smooth, but it's the best I can do! Problems: --------- I've found that the text-editor !Zap only stores part of a window's title in the window definition, presumably to ensure that the right hand side of the title is always visible, regardless of window size. Unfortunately, this means that TreeMenu will not get the whole window title when Menu is clicked on a small Zap window. Hence the menu brought up will sometimes be incorrect if Zap's window titlebar doesn't have room for the complete path. I don't really know of a way of curing this, as there is no way for TreeMenu to find the full filename. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting the latest version -------------------------- I've decided to release only old versions of TreeMenu, and reserve the latest versions for those people who send me a donation to Amnesty International (see below). Details of improvements made in the latest version (4.24 at the moment) are in the file '!TreeMenu.History' Other Stuff ----------- Special thanks are due to Steven Haslam, Denis Howe, Ashley Oliver, Paul Pibworth, A C Blake and Simon Middleton. Many thanks to Dominic Symes for his superb text editor !Zap, and to Jason Williams et al for the equally superb Wimp C library, 'DeskLib'. This program is freeware. It may NOT me used in connection with any profit-making activities. Please contact me if you want to distribute TreeMenu in a PD library. TreeMenu is copyright Julian Smith 1994. Feel free to distribute this program, but you may only distribute the ORIGINAL version, with all files present. ************************************************************************ * * * If you find this program useful, you might like to make a donation * * to Amnesty International, say ú5, by sending me a cheque made out to * * them. * * * * I shall send you the latest version of TreeMenu (4.24 at the moment * * - see the History file for details) and new versions as they become * * available if you do this (please enclose a disc if you're not on * * email). I'll also be more likely to add features/bug fixes for you * * * ************************************************************************ Also, please let me know if you have any comments, problems, suggestions or praise, (or have found a bug!). - Julian Smith ------------------------ julians@cogsci.ed.ac.uk ------------------------ or: ------------------------ Department of Psychology University of Edinburgh 7 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9JZ UK ------------------------