You may distribute Virtual freely, as long as you do not charge for it beyond the cost of the distribution medium or connexion time, and as long as you distribute this documentation with it. You must have my written authorization if you wish to include Virtual on a CD-Rom collection.
If you use it please pay the $10 Shareware fee.
The current version of Virtual can always be found at http://www.enst.fr/~paour/Virtual.html.
What is Virtual?
If you're familiar with X-Windows workstations, you have probably used one virtual window manager or other. Virtual is one of those, for the Mac. It presents you with multiple 'virtual screens' where you can place your windows, so you don't have a clutter of them on your real screen. You can switch virtual screens with a key combination, or by choosing that screen in the Virtual window. You can drag windows around to move them to other screens, and so on. Obviously, if you don't have enough memory to open more than one application at a time, you don't need Virtual (in that case, don't use Office 4.2 either :-)
Virtual is provided as-is. I am not liable for any damage it causes to your system. I will, however, offer limited assistance. I also welcome bug reports and wish-lists.
How do I install Virtual?
If you intend to use Virtual as a floating window, you should install the 'TSM Fix' extension. To do this, drag it to your system folder. This extension fixes a bug in the System that sometimes looses clicks on floating windows.
How do I use Virtual?
It's just an application, no extension, no trap patching, no messing up with your system. You just need to open Virtual. You'll see a floating window, divided in several parts (the virtual screens), that shows smaller versions of all your windows. One of the screens is in a darker shade of gray and has a small menu bar at the top; it's the active screen. One or several windows can be highlighted; they're the frontmost application's windows. Some windows can be drawn in green; they're sticky, which means they will move around with the active screen so as to always be on your monitor.
You can:
• click and drag the mini-windows to other virtual screens.
• shift-click and drag a mini-window around to move all the windows that belong to the same application.
• click on another virtual screen to make it the active screen.
• click on a mini-window to switch to the screen it's in and make the window active.
• click and hold on a mini-window to get some information about it…
• if you hold the command key down while dragging a window, it will be put at the same place as it was on the screen you drag it to. That way, you don't have to realign all you windows when you drag them to another screen. Use this feature with the shift key to align all of your application's windows…
• option-click on a window to make it stick. You cannot make a window with no name stick.
• option-shift-click on a window to make all the windows that belong to the same application stick. Use this for applications that don't name their windows.
• use the cmd-F1 to cmd-F15 combinations on your extended keyboard to go to the corresponding screen (F1 = screen 1, …, F12 = screen 15). Alternatively, you can use cmd-arrow keys.
• use cmd-escape to hide/show Virtual. Note: this also hides/shows other programs based on 'appe' Windows, such as HoverBar.
• cmd-tab allows you to choose a window you want to jump to. Virtual will automatically change virtual screens and activate the application that created the window. You can use the arrow, page up, page down, home and end keys to select the window you want to jump to.
Preferences
General
The most important preference setting allows you to decide whether you want Virtual to float above all other windows, or not. In the case where you don't want it to float, you have the option to choose a 'hot corner': if you move the mouse to that corner, Virtual will come to the foreground.
You can change the number of virtual screens by setting the geometry parameters. The scale represents how much smaller Virtual is, compared to your screen size. If you choose 10, the mini-virtual screens will be 10 times smaller than your monitor (or monitors).
If you check the 'Use grow box' checkbox, there will be a grow box in the corner of Virtual, which you can use to resize the window, to a certain extent (it's merely a shortcut to set the 'scale' parameter, so not all window shapes are possible). The grow box cannot be used when Virtual is floating…
If you check the 'Hide after launch' checkbox, Virtual will go to the background right after it has started, thereby putting the application you were previously using in the front.
Appearance
You can also change the colors that are used to draw mini-windows in the mini-screens, or decide not to use color at all (this feature was requested by people who were color impaired).
You can also have Virtual draw the icon of the owner application in the center of mini-windows. Since I find it nicer when the icons are dimmed, there is an option for that, too. Additionaly, you may want to have virtual print the name of the application that created the window below the name of the mini-window. If you uncheck the 'Use mini font for names', the names of the windows will be drawn in Geneva 9 instead of the custom miniature font.
Hot Keys
This dialog lets you choose which key combinations will jump to which screen, or move to the screen above, below, etc. Just click on the rectangles to change the key combinations. You can cancel a key combination by clicking in the corresponding rectangle and then choosing 'clear'.
The 'Consume Keystroke' checkbox should remain unchecked and the key combination to hide/show Virtual should remain cmd-esc for compatibility with other floating windows. If the checkbox is checked, other floaters do not get the keystroke and don't hide themselves.
Most of these changes can be previewed by clicking on the 'Apply' button.
Requirements and conflicts
Color QuickDraw, System 7 or later, 240kb of free memory.
Virtual goes to great lengths to change the way you use your windows. With most well written applications, this is not a problem, but some applications do not like it. In particular, there have been reports of odd behaviour with AppleMail.
Virtual also intercepts some events before the application you are working on sees them. This is the case for cmd-arrow and cmd-function key combinations. This can be annoying because some (most) word processors use them for cursor movement. These combinations will be customizable in the next version. Also, there have been reports of conflicts with the Apple Adjustable Keyboard.
Lastly, since Virtual can put windows outside the visible screen, you should depend on Virtual to switch between processes. For example, if you try to use the application menu to switch to another application, you will go to that application, but not in the virtual screen where that application's windows are. This is true of any other process switcher you might use. In some cases, the conflicts can be even more dramatic; for example, Keyboard Cues crashes when you try to use it with Virtual installed.
When using Word 5.1a, with two windows open, in different virtual screens, if a key is pressed while the window currently active is not the window in the currently active screen, Word exits due to a bus error. System operation is not otherwise affected.
What happens when you hide an application with the 'Hide …' item of the Application menu or by holding the option key down while switching to another application? Virtual doesn't see the windows that belong to applications that are hiden. Consequently, if you move to another virtual screen, all non sticky windows will move around, except those windows that are hidden. That's not a big problem if the windows that are hidden were located on the active screen when they were hidden; in fact some people thought it was a feature. But if the windows were on another virtual screen at the time, they may reappear out of the area covered by Virtual. In that case, you can use the 'All windows on Virtual' item in Virtual's File menu to put everything back in place.
To Do
• FAT version (this keeps being pushed back… do you want to give me a PowerMac?).
• Have a way to force applications to open their windows in a predefined virtual screen.
• More information in the popup information about a window (when you click and hold on a window). But what kind of stuff would be interesting?
• Any more ideas?
Change Log
1.1.2 (May 30, 1995): More bugs and incompatibilities fixed. Added option to send Virtual in the background after it has loaded.
1.1.1 (May 29, 1995): Fixed an old and nasty bug where Virtual could crash if there were no windows on screen.
1.1 (May 28, 1995): Rewrote the preferences dialog, adding the ability to use custom key combinations to change screens, etc. Added optional resize corner to make it easier to change the size of the Virtual window. Optional larger font for window names.
1.03 (May 18, 1995): Fixed a bug where an application would put up an alert way offscreen because it was confused and Virtual would be unable to jump to it (SimpleText, for example). Added the ability to move a window to the same place on another screen. Fixed some bugs. Added a check so that when a window is moved, its title can no longer be placed under the menu bar. Now function-keys 1 through 15 can be used to jump to another window (what kind of a sick user has 15 screens?).
1.02 (May 17, 1995): Bug fix version. Added a menu to put all windows back on Virtual when something screwd up. Miscellaneous fixes. Fixed some interface bugs in the 'Jump-to-Window' dialog, including a conflict with The Tilery. Added code to disable all access to the Virtual window while there is a modal window in the front of the screen, because it could cause problems and made the modal window not-so-modal… As a result, the standard file dialogs shortcuts with cmd-arrows work once again.
1.01 (May 16, 1995): Bug fix version. Made Virtual compatible with System 7, although floating still requires 7.1. Fixed some interface bugs in the 'Jump-to-Window' dialog, including a conflict with Stickies. Increased default memory partition. Started using cmd-F1 to cmd-F12 to switch virtual screens. Additionnal bug fixes.
1.0 (May 15, 1995): First 'final' release. Almost completely rewritten from version 0.9. Added floating windows and too many other features to remember.
0.9 (April 1995): Original beta release. Intended to test the interest for further developpement.
Shareware notice, etc.
Virtual is Shareware, which means that if you use it regularly, you should pay for it. I'm not charging much for it, because I had a lot of fun doing it, and because I believe few people would register if it was more expensive. It is not crippled, which means that it operates exactly the same whether you register or not. It will remind you to register every week until you do, though :-)
It is copyrighted, which means you may not distribute modified copies of the application. You are encouraged to distribute unmodified copies as long as you distribute the present documentation with it.
To register, please send $US 10, or 50 French Francs, either in cash, or in a check draw on an American or French bank to the following address:
Pierre-Luc Paour
99, rue de la République
13980 Alleins
France
I will then send you a code to stop the weekly reminder.
Thanks to
Michael Hecht, for the interface to the Layer Manager used by Virtual.
Matt Slot, for his 'appe' Windows code, and Guillaume Lessard, for porting it to Code Warrior and making it PPC native.
Troy Gaul, for permission to use Infinity Windoid.
Dair Grant, for the ColourBlock CDEF.
Todd Clements for his Dialog Control source code.
Robert S. Mah for HotKeys.
Gauthier Houël, Arnaud "nono" Mouronval and Robert K. Walker, for their beta-testing efforts and ideas.
My roommate, Greg, for being so patient (and asleep) those long nights.
