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Text File | 1994-09-18 | 11.0 KB | 217 lines

Hourglass Extension version 1.10 © Sam Kington 8th August 1994 This program is freeware, *not* public domain – i.e., I retain copyright (see “Boring legal message”). This module will only work with RISC OS 3 or later. What this program does ********************** For a start, this program is essentially one small module, HourExt, which at about 2300 bytes is considerably smaller than the whole application, which weighs in at slightly less than 44K, of which most is the source code and this help ﬁle. If you decide you don’t need the whole application cluttering up your hard disc or ﬂoppy or whatever, you can put the module somewhere else (!System.Modules would be a good place), and RMLoad it in your Boot sequence. If you decide you don’t want *any* of the application, of course, you can delete the whole thing. If you want to distribute this program or use it for your own programs, see “Distribution”. Anyway, down to what the module does. Basically, it sits in the background, and when you change the palette it changes the hourglass colours to match. So if you change the mouse pointer colours, say to black and white instead of the default dark and light blue, it will change the colour of the Hourglass to black and white as well. Actually, you have slightly more choice than that. The hourglass only uses two colours, and if you take a quick look at the palette you will notice that there are in fact three different mouse colours: 1, used for the mouse border, 2, used for the inside, and 3, usually red, used for “alert”-style pointers such as when you want to copy a ﬁle from the CLI. So there is a special *command, *Hourglass_Colours <sand colour> <background colour>, where <sand colour> and <background colour> are numbers between 1 and 3, which will set the colours accordingly. The default setting is Hourglass_Colours 1 2; experiment until you ﬁnd your favourite setting. *Hourglass On|Off|<percentage> will turn the hourglass on or off, or display the supplied percentage underneath the hourglass. You may already have a module that supplies a command of the same name, but in practice there shouldn’t be any conﬂicts as once a command has been handled by one module, it won’t be passed onto another module. To ensure *Hourglass gets passed to HourExt, load it before other modules with the same command. Note that when you type Hourglass Off, you will not necessarily turn it off: you have to issue a Hourglass Off for every Hourglass On. Also, if you set the percentage of the hourglass (say Hourglass Percentage 50), then issue another Hourglass On, any subsequent Hourglass Percentage calls will be ineffective until you issue as many Hourglass Offs as you issued Hourglass Ons after setting the percentage. Issuing a further Hourglass_Off will turn off the percentage. This is an internal feature of RISC OS, nothing to do with HourExt. *Hourglass_LEDs On|Off On|Off will set the state of the LEDs, so *Hourglass_LEDs On Off would set the first one on and the second one off. As well as changing the colour of the Hourglass to suit the palette, and allowing you to muck around with the hourglass, HourExt sets up two ﬁlters which intercept all calls to Wimp_Poll, turning on the Hourglass after control has been given to a program, and turning it off when they give it back. The practical upshot is that whenever one application spends too much time on its own without letting other applications have a turn (and, more importantly, without letting you do anything), the Hourglass is turned on until the task gives control back. You can alter the delay before the hourglass is turned on when an application stops multitasking, with the command *Hourglass_Delay <time in centiseconds>. *Hourglass_Delay 0 turns off all multitasking checking. Finally, HourExt knows about Desktop saves, and will insert the relevent commands in any Desktop ﬁles. However, it needs to know where to load itself from, and does so by looking at the variable HourExt$Module. If the module is run by the !HourExt application, this will be set up automatically; however, if it is RMLoaded from somewhere in a Boot sequence or whatever, the variable will not be set up. If the variable doesn't exist, the module assumes it was started as System:Modules.HourExt, which is a sensible default; if you load it from somewhere else, say !Boot.AutoLoad.HourExt, add *Set HourExt$Module !Boot.AutoLoad.HourExt to the file you load HourExt in. Limitations *********** HourExt turns the hourglass on if the machine stops multitasking for a deﬁned period, which works most of the time. It also notices if you press F12, and won’t turn the hourglass on in that case. However, if you select *Commands from the Task Manager menu, the hourglass will come on, and stay on until you go back to the desktop. In general, if you stop multitasking, HourExt will put up an hourglass; however, if you are actually doing something but not multitasking, as opposed to a program hogging the machine, then it shouldn’t put up an hourglass. Unfortunately, it has no way of knowing which is which – and do bear in mind that this is just a quick program written in a couple of days. You are likely to have problems with screen captures from Paint, and any single-tasking program that doesn’t turn off the pointer, which includes most *Info programs from Acorn User but not most games (I don’t think). If it annoys you, use *Hourglass_Delay 0 to turn the checking off. Boring legal message ******************** This application is freeware, that is, it can be distributed freely as long as only reasonable charges are made for media and distribution. I retain copyright on all program code and documentation. This software is supplied “as is”: I make no warranty, expressed or implied, of the merchantability of this software or its ﬁtness for any particular purpose. In no circumstances shall I be liable for any damage, loss of proﬁts, or any indirect or consequential loss arising out of the use of this software or inability to use this software, even if I have been advised of the possibility of such loss. In other words, if your computer crashes, blows up, you lose all your work etc. all because of HourExt (unlikely I know), don’t blame me. Distribution ************ The following ﬁles should be present in a full version of HourExt (you may, however, not have the full version): Name Purpose Usefulness **************************************************** !Boot Not very !Run Not very !Sprites Not very HourExt The main module Essential ModSource The source code to the module Slightly ShortHelp Help text compaction Quite ShortHDocs Help on ShortHelp Quite !Help This ﬁle Very Vsn110 This is version 1.10 Not at all The “Vsn110” ﬁle’s only purpose is to show that this is version 1.10 – which is useful if you’re browsing directory displays, or you have several different versions. As it is, there is only one (distributed) version of HourExt. If you remove this ﬁle, nothing at all will fail to happen. The only point of the !Boot, !Run, and !Sprites is to make this an application, so there is a HourExt$Dir variable, so the source code can ﬁnd the ShortHelp routines (see below). They also set up HourExt$Module; if you simply RMLoad the module from a path different from System:Modules.HourExt, you must set this up yourself (see above). ModSource and ShortHelp are basically the source code of the module; or rather, ModSource is the source code, and uses routines in ShortHelp. ShortHelp is a collection of routines which will compact strings using RISC OS’s internal dictionary, to be re-expanded by *Help. ShortHDocs is essentially a !Help ﬁle for ShortHelp. HourExt is of course the main module, without which the whole thing is useless. Although I would prefer you distributed all the ﬁles together, if you want to include any of the routines in your own programs (the module or the ShortHelp routines) you will probably not want to distribute all the almost-useless ﬁles. So here are the conditions for distribution: • This ﬁle (!Help) must always be distributed with the HourExt module, complete and unmodiﬁed. • If you distribute ModSource, you must include ShortHelp (otherwise it won’t compile). If you don’t include the !Boot etc. ﬁles, you will have to change the ModSource code so it can ﬁnd ShortHelp (putting it in your Library should be quite sensible - replace <HourExt$Dir>.ShortHelp by %.ShortHelp). • You can however distribute ShortHelp separately from any of the other ﬁles, and use it in your own programs. See the ﬁle “ShortHDocs” for more information. • You must distribute !Boot, !Run, !Sprites and Vsn110 together, or not at all. About all these strange foreign characters in this ﬁle ******************************************************* OK, so if you’re reading this on a PC or a Mac or another strange machine like that, you may be wondering what all these strange ae things are. Well, they’re quotes (sorry, there was another one), dashes, ligatures, etc. Honest. But not on all machines... Basically, character sets are only standard up to character 127, which is basically alphanumerics and a few standard punctuation marks. Foreign characters, typographical oddities like quotes and ligatures, and other more obscure symbols are “non-standard”, and each computer often has its own idea of where they should go in the character set. So don’t worry: even if it’s hard to read on your current machine, it won’t be on an Acorn machine. It may look slightly strange if you’re using the System font, however. But why am I using these strange characters in the ﬁrst place? Well, they’re in the character set and they look nice in an outine font, and I’ve written a program called Smart Quotes (sorry for the plug) that substitutes these sort of characters automatically, and I’ve got it turned on at the moment... How to contact me ***************** All bug-reports, suggestions, comments or indeed any feedback at all will be welcomed. Here’s how to get to me: E-mail : 9262861k@arts.gla.ac.uk, 926286ki@udcf.gla.ac.uk during term-time These should be OK until June 1996 At Christmas, Easter and during the summer, you can get me at wombat@altern.com, wombat@email.teaser.com or sam@altern.com, in order of preference (that is, if mail bounces off one of these or I don’t answer within a week send to the next one). Snail-mail : My term-time address, at least until June 1995, is: Sam Kington Flat 2/1 44 Hotspur Street Glasgow G20 8NL SCOTLAND Again, a backup is the home address – anything that goes here will get to me eventually. Sam Kington Merlhiot 24420 Savignac les Eglises FRANCE Term-time is October to June, with bits off at Christmas (3 weeks) and Easter (4 weeks).