SuperScrew is collection of utilities that will help you avoid some of the most tedious desktop chores, The application will quickly unmount your drives and partitions. The annoying Finder warning is avoided. The FKEY has additional functions. SuperScrew suspends dialog boxes so that you can look behind them or check your files. A Go Finder button has been added that can select or launch Finder. SuperScrew can force paste up to twenty characters of text into certain environments, such as some dialog boxes, THINK Reference, and Prodigy that don't allow the usual paste command. It tricks the processor into thinking that you have typed the text contained in the clipboard (desk scrap). This feature makes it useful for fast text macros. The hang up phone button has been removed, but some source code is still included. It is FREEware! Use it at your own risk.
All of the functions in SuperScrew have common keyboard equivalents. For example, with the SuperScrew FKEY activated you can use command/Q to quit an application that doesn't allow it, including Finder.
Caveats
I am excluding the usual instructions and warnings about FKEYs as they are growing rather tiresome. If you have questions about installation, please refer to your Suitcase II or FKEY Manager documentation. I highly recommend Carlos Weber's FKEY Manager utility. It is available from a variety of on line sources and it is FREEware.
If you try to Paste! on your desktop, it may rename some of your files. If you suspend a dialog box to move around some files, you might get a crash. (Not necessarily though!) Similarly, if you Unmount! a volume that is the home a currently running application, you might get a crash.
These utilities are not for the faint of heart. Use Your Head. If you use SuperScrew to quit applications, you do not get a chance to save your files.
If you need to remount volumes, restart your machine. Better yet, get Bill Steinberg’s excellent FKEY, Mount'Em. If you Unmount! a floppy, press command/shift/1 or 2 and it will eject. If you are wondering whether to use Unmount 2 or Unmount 3, click once on your startup volume. Hold option down as you choose "Clean Up All" from the Special menu in Finder. The volumes will be arranged vertically according to their volume reference numbers. Your start up volume is V1. I have not included Unmount 1 for obvious reasons.
Technical
This FKEY only pastes 20 characters. If you attempt to paste more, it will truncate the string. I am working on the GetNextEvent trap patch that might solve problems like this. However, it may be very difficult or even impossible to implement the patch in an FKEY. If you need to paste more right away you can use Bill Steinberg’s other excellent utility, Bootman, to increase the size of your event queue. (Also FREEware!)
I use the Process Manager call LaunchApplication() to start up the Finder. (Thank you Mark Reed!) This means that launching Finder won't work with System 6. Everything else works fine though. If you want to quit Finder, I recommend that you use the FKEY. If you want to launch Finder with the new Finder! application, you must either have it running in the background before Finder exits, or you must have some way to launch it without Finder. There are a variety of ways to do this, but I use Mike Throckmorton's FREEware Out To Launch™. If you already use Out To Launch, these utilities now give you the ability to launch Finder!
This package has been tested on various Macs with differing configurations including Mac+, SE, II, and IIci. The FKEY is not compatable with my combination of extensions and Symantec Great Works, but the SuperScrew application works fine with it. If you have compatability problems and you really want to suspend dialog boxes, try my FKEY DialogZip. It converts dialog boxes in to double clickable icons. It works fine with GW. It too is FREEware!
Business
If you are working with a small keyboard, you may find Extendor FKEYs useful. They give your your small powerbook or mac+ keyboards access to the keys on extended keyboard; such as home, page up, del, help and others. Unlike other similar utilities, the outputs from these FKEYs are subject to modification. For example, if you wanted to press command-help, simply press Caps Lock before you activate the help FKEY, then hold the command key down afterward. Because of this feature, I am asking a $10.00 shareware fee for Extendor FKEYs. They are available on AOL or send me a disk.
If you have suggestions for buttons that I could add to SuperScrew, please let me know.
