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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 รบ20 (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
-