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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NickPrefs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The files in this archive were written by Nicola Salmoria and are freely
distributable as long as the archive remains intact, and only a nominal fee
is charged for its distribution.
This software is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either
expressed or implied. By using it, you agree to accept the entire risk as to
the quality and performance of the program.
Comments, suggestions and bug reports are welcome.
Nicola Salmoria
Via Piemonte 11
53100 Siena ITALY
Overview
--------
NickPrefs is an enhancement of IPrefs, the preferences manager of Workbench
2.0. From these very few words, you understand that you need Kickstart 2.0
to use this program ;-) It has been tested under Kickstart 2.04, that is the
one burnt in the A500+' ROMs.
NickPrefs manages three new preferences, which may be modified with the three
accompaning programs WBPicture, BusyPointer and Floppy.
WBPicture allows you to display any IFF picture in the main Workbench window,
supplanting the original (and boring ;-)) WBPattern.
BusyPointer lets you edit the clock pointer used by programs when they are
busy. You may create an animated pointer, see later for details.
Floppy provides the ability to mess with the public fields of trackdisk, that
is the TDPF_NOCLICK flag, step delay and the like. BE CAREFUL when changing
the delays! You should not touch them unless you really know what you're
doing! Read on for more info.
Installation
------------
Copy Nickprefs in your C: directory, and edit s:startup-sequence. Search for
the line "IPrefs", and below it write "NickPrefs". It's important to launch
NickPrefs just after IPrefs.
If you are currently using my program "BusyPointer" or a similar (and less
powerful ;-)) busy pointer animator, remove it from the startup-sequence
since NickPrefs replaces it.
Likewise, if you use a program that turns off the drive click remove it
because Floppy does the same thing and much more.
Then copy WBPicture, BusyPointer and Floppy in SYS:Prefs, and reset.
You're now ready to go.
WBPicture
---------
I've tried to make WBPicture, BusyPointer and Floppy identical to the other
Preferences, so usage is (or should be) exactly the same.
When started the first time, WBPicture will open a window with most gadgets
disabled. Click on the "Name" gadget to pick a filename, or just insert it in
the string gadget. Pay attention to specify a complete path for the picture,
e.g. "PICTURES:foo". Do not use a relative path or NickPrefs won't be able to
locate the file. Note that the file is referenced by name, not stored in the
preferences file, so you must provide a path which is always accessible at
boot time (that is, somewhere in the hard disk, or your boot floppy).
When you've selected a picture, its size, planes and aspect ratio are
displayed. On their right are the current settings of the Workbench screen,
so you can compare them.
Below the info fields there are two checkbox. You can decide to center the
picture in the screen, or to put it in the top left corner. If you are using
a small brush, it can be tiled to cover the whole screen. Try with "Boing.br"
contained in the "Presets" directory of this archive.
Then there is a gadget named "Load Palette". It will call the Palette
Preferences loaded with the image's palette. You may then decide to use that
colors, if they don't mess the 3D look of Workbench, or to keep the old
colors. Pictures are *NOT* remapped to suit the actual Workbench palette, so
if you have an image processor, you may want to use it. I use an 8 color
Workbench, with this palette:
10 10 10 grey
0 0 0 black
15 15 15 white
6 8 11 blue
9 6 3 brown
3 8 3 green
12 12 0 yellow
14 7 0 orange
Reducing a picture from HAM to 8 colors with this palette, using some kind of
dithering (and of course resizing it) often gives good results.
Finally, the "Test" gadget is equivalent to the one in WBPattern, and lets
you see what the background looks like without exiting from WBPicture.
BusyPointer
-----------
This is a replacement for my former program, "BusyPointer".
Just as Pointer allows you to edit the Intuition pointer, this one gives you
the possibility to edit the clock which the Workbench and other programs show
when busy.
But it does more than that: if you activate the "Guess Busy" option, not only
the standard clock but also bubbles, "Wait" writings and the like will be
converted to the one you chose. The option does exactly what it says: it will
try to "guess" if a pointer represents a busy state or not. The algorithm is
rather complex, and may fail. It works nice with most programs, but may turn
to busy some pointers it shouldn't, or vice versa. Please let me know of such
behaviours.
The editor is very similar to Pointer, but you can create animations. Just
write the number of frames you want and use the slider to move across them.
The program has the capability to import IFF brushes and animbrushes. This is
obtained selecting "Open..." in the menu "Project", like when you load a
saved preset. If you have animations written for the stand-alone version of
BusyPointer, you can load them as well.
Animations replace the current one; if you load a single brush, it replaces
only the current frame.
There are four presets provided with this archive; they are:
- StopWatch the standard clock, animated
- TwoHands the standard clock with two spinning hands
- SandGlass a sandglass
- ZZBubble the Workbench 1.3 bubble
Floppy
------
This one lets you stop that annoying drive click, and also mess with step,
settle and calibrate delay. Parameters are set individually for each drive.
Normally, you should not touch the delay sliders. The default values, 3000,
15000 and 4000 ╡s, are the lower bounds stated by Commodore for the drive
mechanics. Lowering them, the drive may work anyway, but don't expect to
speed up floppy access, so there's no point in doing that. If you own an out
of specs drive, raising step and calibrate delay may reduce the risk of r/w
errors.
Note that the step delay greatly affects the noise the heads make while
moving. If your drive is particularly noisy, you may try to make it more
bearable by fine tuning the step delay.
The "Max Retry" slider shows the number of times that the trackdisk.device
retries to read a track when it finds an error. This is quite interesting,
for two reasons:
- Lowering it to zero will cause a read error request to pop up immediately,
without retrying to read the track. This means that you will discover earlier
potential fatal errors due to imperfections in the disk.
- Raising it will increase the chance to read a faulty track, allowing to
recover data. Copy it somewhere else and throw away the disk!
I am currently using a Max Retry of 0 times, and I've no problems at all.
Bugs
----
I have problems in recognizing the main Workbench window from drawer windows.
Currently, I modify the BackFill Hook if the window has the flag
WFLG_WBENCHWINDOW set and: is a backdrop window or its title is "Workbench".
This means that if you open a drawer whose name is "Workbench", its hook
will be mistakenly changed.
You can easily work around this bug simply by changing the drawer's name:
since the patch is case sensitive, you may call it "WorkBench" (note the
capital 'B').
If the color map of a picture is in 24-bit format, instead of the usual
12-bit, Palette does not read it correctly. This is a bug in Palette, *NOT*
in WBPicture. I hope it will be fixed soon.
Acknowledgments
---------------
As usual, I have to thank my beta testers, whose help has been invaluable
during the development of this program:
Stefano Iacus
Federico Giannici
Many thanks to Dante Profeta who provided me the documentation for the IFF
ANIM format, without which I wouldn't have been able to load animbrushes
from BusyPointer.
Thank you very much!