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The Datafile PD-CD 1 Issue 2
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1994-09-29
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"ATOOL Manual" (!Brief!)
------------------------
1. General description.
____________________________________________________________________________
ATool is an application launcher. It 's main use is, to provide you
an easy way of accessing programs ( and not only! ) that are hard to find
each time they are needed. In other words it substitutes several mouse
clicks and key-presses into a single menu selection.
2. How it works.
____________________________________________________________________________
When you run ATool, an iconbar is displayed at the top of the
screen. This iconbar works in an about similar way to the standard
Archimedes iconbar. It can contain tool icons, describing areas you want to
have on it, that can be plain text or sprites, large or small. The first
toolicon on the left is the master tool icon, which has the main menu of the
application. This is the only icon that is not user editable. User can
create as many new areas (icons) as he wants and edit them by choosing the
Edit Area menu item on the mastertool icon menu. Areas have an icon on the
iconbar, and menus that contain the area items. These menus appear on Menu
mouse-clicks and can be fully functional Archimedes menus, containing
submenus, shaded items and dotted lines. Even hot-key definitions of an item
will appear on the menus. It's exactly like pressing menu over an icon on
the Archimedes iconbar, where you have a pop-up menu being displayed and
ready to assist you. In a similar way, you can define several areas (icons)
and menus, suitable to your needs.
2.1. MasterTool icon.
---------------------
When clicking Menu on the first icon on the left ( master tool
icon), a menu is displayed with the following entries:
-Info...................= general information dialogue box.
-Options................= several program options.
-Set CSD........= when selected means, activate the hot-key for
setting CSD (default hot-key is Ctrl-Tab). When
you press Ctrl-Tab over a filer directory, CSD is
the set to this directory.
-Hot Keys.......= when selected means that hot-keys are enabled.
-No Beep........= when selected means that never a beep sound would
be generated.
-No Menu Titles.= when selected means that menus will have no menu
titles (active when ATool is loaded).
-Verbose........= when selected on serious actions yes/no prompts
appear.
-Small Icons....= when selected, the iconbar consists of small
icons. (active when ATool is loaded)
-Iconbar Tool...= when selected, an icon is placed on the iconbar
diplaying the free memory or the time.
(active when ATool is loaded)
-Save options...= when selected it saves the current option
settings.
-Mouse Step.............= the sub-menu can take a value for a new mouse step
(1..9).
-Kill Module............= the sub-menu contains a list of the modules in the
RMA. Selecting one of the modules in the list
will remove it from the RMA.
-Edit Area..............= Opens the window where you can edit the tool data.
See Drawfile 'Manual_2' for detailed description.
-Quit...................= Terminates ATool!
Another hot-key provided is the popup key (default: shift-F11), which
pops the ATool iconbar back/front. This hot-key and the CSD hot-key, are user
defined. The definitions are in the application's Messages textfile. In
Messages file is defined also the font used on Iconbar Tool. The default is
'Homerton.Medium.Oblique'.
If you have so many icons that fill all the icon bar and extend
outside of the screen area, you can scroll left/right the icons by pressing
Ctrl-LArrow/Ctrl-RArrow.
2.2. Edit Area.
---------------
Selecting 'Edit Area' on the mastertool icon's menu, a dialogue box
opens, where you can edit all the user areas and their contents. When you
choose this menu item for the first time, everything is blank. You can see
that the window is divided into three parts:
-Area
= actions on areas (icons on the iconbar)
You can enter a new name on the writable icon and then click on 'Create' to
make a new area, or click on 'Update' to change its name. In order to delete
the whole area click on 'Delete' icon. All newly created areas are appended
to the end. If you want to create an area before the current one, click on
'Insert' icon.
The current area is shown if any. Pressing 'left/right' arrow icons you
can set the current area. An area by default will appear on the ATool bar as
a text icon with the area's name, but if you put a sprite in the 'Sprites'
file inside the application directory, with the same name as the area, then
instead of a text icon you will have a sprite icon representing the area.
The small iconbar sprites should be named as '~area_name' and the large
iconbar sprites as 'area_name'. If large sprites don't exist and you select
the large iconbar, then the small sprites are used. Othewise icons will
contain only text.
-Item
= actions on area items.
You can enter a new item by typing it's name and action, or by dragging an
object from the filer. For example, if you drag an application from the
filer, its name is inserted and the action goes 'Filer_Run ..application
path..Name', eg. 'Filer_Run ADFS::4.$.!System'. You can then 'append' this
item to the end of the menu of the current area, or 'insert' it before the
current item, update the current item and 'delete' it. Selecting 'Dot', a
dotted line will separate this item from the previous one. Selecting
'Shade', this item will appear shaded. A click on sort will sort all the
items in the current area. On HotKey icon you can insert a letter from A-Z
which will be the hot-key that you can press instead of selecting this item
from the area menu. For example if you enter 'E' as a hot-key for the !Edit
application, pressing Control-E will do the action for !Edit. (Note that if
a window owns the caret, you can press Alt-Control-E in order to avoid Wimp
capturing the key press). Pressing 'up/down' arrow icons you set the current
menu item of the area.
-SubMenu
= actions on submenu items.
You can define an item as a submenu of the current area menu by selecting
the submenu option. Pressing 'left/right' arrow icons you move into the
inner/outter area menu. Eg. to make 'Item 2' as a submenu in the structure
+------+ +------+
|Item 1| |Item 1+------+
|Item 2| ---> |Item 2|Item 4|
|Item 3| |Item 3|Item 5|
+------+ +------+Item 6|
+------+
you Click on 'Up Item/Down Item' arrow icons, until you have 'Item 2' as the
current item. Then Click on the 'Submenu' option icon and turn it on, and
Click on 'Update Item'.
Clicking on 'Submenu Right' arrow icon, the Submenu field turns into 'Item
2', which means that the current area you are editing has become the submenu
'Item 2'. Now you can add items to this submenu with the same way you add
items to the main area menu.
If you want to start from the beginning a new structure, you can just
delete the file named 'Pathdata' inside the application directory.
3. Technical details.
____________________________________________________________________________
The program is written in C. This means mainly speed. It uses idle
polling in such a way that it takes a little CPU time. Maximum number of
areas and items are limited only by available memory. The code is much
smaller than the same code compiled with RiscOSLib because I'm using my own
RiscOS Library. Both, the Library and the program, are error free in this
version, as far as I know. The application is RO2 compatible! I have
developed it on RO3 and RO3.5 (It now works on RPC) but nothing seems to be
incombatible with RO2.
4. Present/Future.
____________________________________________________________________________
I'm planning to improve ATool, with more reasonable and really helpful
features. One thing I hate on professional (or not) applications is code
that is useless, slow and with no standards.
Features planned for the future:
- Relocatable module version (shortly)
- Read-only version for networks, schools etc
- Modular approach to include/discard tools like Artworks
5. How to get a full working copy of ATool
____________________________________________________________________________
To do that you have to send an amount equal to ú20 (twenty english pounds)
to the address below. In a few days you will receive the full working copy
of ATool and also be included in our list for later upgrades. Cheques should
be issued for 'Anthony Plassaras'.
6. Contact address
____________________________________________________________________________
Archimedes Was Greek,
Anthony Plassaras
13-15 Xiromerou St.
11526 Athens
GREECE
email: awg@ars.ath.forthnet.gr
fax: ++30 1 6494079