Hexadecimal is merely another way of counting. In hexadecimal instead of
counting to the tenth number before adding an extra digit, you go to the sixteenth. The name comes from the latin 'hex' meaning 6 and 'deca' meaning 10 (10+6=16!). As we only have 10 digits ie. 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 to go upto 16 in one digit, we use uppercase (capital) letters for the extra digits. Hexadecimal numbers are often marked by an ampersand (&) to show that they are not a letter but a number.
We can count up but when we get to 10 instead of adding a 1 and going
back to zero we keep going with letters:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F 20 and so on.
Inside the computer, it uses hexadecimal rather than decimal for many
activities. One of these activities is the storage of filetypes as a
hexadecimal number. When I refer to filetypes in the rest of this manual, I
will be referring to this number which denotes the type which the file is.
To make things easier on the user, Acorn included a labelling feature for
these filetypes so that we can set them or read them as text. For example if
you click the menu button over the 'manual' file, follow the entry
File 'Manual' >
across to the right, and go down to the 'Info' option, and again move to the
right, a window will open. In the 2nd line down it should read;
Type: Text (fff)
The word 'Text' is an example of such a label and the letters 'fff' are the
hexadecimal number for 4095.
Every filetype hexadecimal number has only 3 digits the largest being fff,
this means that there are 4096 (remembering &000) possible filetypes.
In the computers memory, each of these numbers can be represented by a string of text a maximum of 8 characters long eg. &FFB = 'BASIC' and &AFF = 'DrawFile', in most parts of typeinfo, the types are referred to as hexadecimal numbers, but in a couple of places strings can be used. Read the rest of this manual to find out about these locations (especially b10).
To confuse matters even more, some files don't have a filetype and are merely intended to be loaded into an address in the computers memory. These files if loaded into typeinfo will cause a message box to open, nicely informing you that the file has no type at the moment.
b2. Multiple uses
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In Filetypes by Mark Thompson on which this is loosely based, when a
filetype was used by more than one program, there was still only 4 lines of
information allowed. When analysing what improvements I could make, I
decided to provide a facility for such filetypes. Now, in the information
window there is an icon that says something like "Use 1:2" this means that
the currently displayed information is for the 1st out of 2 known uses. To
see the other uses simply click on the right or left arrows to go forwards or
backwards, respectively. Note that their is currently a restriction of 10
maximum usages so that memory is not overused by typeinfo. Also
remember, there is only one filesprite per type and it doesn't change with
the usage, perhaps in the future...
b3. The Iconbar icon
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If you click on this icon with the select mouse button, the information
window will be brought up and it will contain the information about the
last loaded filetype (the starting type is &FFF). If you click on this icon with the adjust mouse button, the editing window will be brought up and it will contain the last edited records data.
b4. The Information window
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There are several icons to the information window and at first glance, they
can make it appear cluttered. To start with the main purpose of the window
is to display information about the selected filetype. This filetype can be
selected in many different ways as outlined in the 'Loading Files' section
of this document.
Icon Uses
~~~~~~~~~
The icon at the very top-left of the window displays the filename of the
loaded file. Or at least if the filename is too long to fit in the icon, the last 52 characters of the filename. If you do not load a file and merely
search for data about the file instead of a useless out of date filename,
it displays the message 'Data search complete' to show that the search
has finished. If when you open the information window by clicking on the
icon bar before you have ever loaded a file or done a search the icon
will contain the message, 'Demonstration of operation', to show that no
search was done nor file loaded.
The next icon down displays a valuable bit of information. This icon
displays the filetype hexadecimal number as well as the File$Type name.
If the name is not available (has not been specified by any program) then
the window simply displays the message 'Unknown to the
computer' and then a dash and the hex no.
The arrows on either side of this box pointing left and right allow you to
easily display the filetype directly before or after the current one, by
clicking on the left or right arrows respectively. Or you can simply hold
down Ctrl and press either the left or right cursor arrows.
To the right of these two icon is a square icon. This will display the
filesprite if it has been already loaded into memory or if it is in the records.
If it is in memory but NOT in the records then it will still be displayed. If
however no spritefile can be found then the box will simply be left blank.
The next icon down is used to display the type of program that should be
using that filetype according to the Acorn allocation rules. This is useful
for if you are trying to decide on a filetype for a new application, you can
quickly and easily see whether your application's filetype is in the right
section.
Below this there are four borderless icons within one large one. These 4
icons hold the information that is loaded from the text record files. This
data can be edited in the edit window if you feel you can add something to
the comprehensive information already in place. This is probably the most
valuable part of the entire window as it
tells you what the file is what application can load/save it and where you
can get a copy of the application from.
Further down in the bottom left is an icon which will contain a message of
the form 'Use x:x'. This is in place for files which are used used by 2 or
more different applications. These uses of the same filetype I have dubbed
usage. The number to the left of the colon is the number of the usage
currently on display in the information icons. The number to the right of
the colon is the number of usages for this filetype. To the left of this icon
is two arrows pointing left and right, to see the next usage click on the
right one, to see the last usage click on the left one. If the currently
displayed usage is the first and you click to go back, there is no effect and
vice versa. If you click the adjust mouse button over either of these arrows,
then it does the action of the other arrow.
To the far bottom-right is the 'Edit' icon. When you click on this icon, the
record for that filetype is loaded into the editor and the information
window is closed while the edit window opens. You are now free to do
any editing you want on that filetype, to the data stored in the records. Or
alternatively you can simply press Ctrl-E.
Miscellaneous...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The info window can be opened in 6 different ways:
• If the autoload option is turned on and you double-click
on a file without a run type the window will open.
• If you click with select on the iconbar icon, the window
will open displaying the information about the last loaded
filetype.
• If a file is dragged to the iconbar, the window will open
displaying any data that is available about that filetype.
• If you use the hotkey function where you hold down either
set of Ctrl and Alt keys and double-click on the file
the information window will open displaying data about that
filetype.
• Or you can edit the filetype into the 'Find Info'
window (found from the iconbar menu) and perform the search
the window will open containing available information
about the entered filetype.
• By pressing the hotkey F1. Read the Hotkeys section (e2) for
more information.
b.5 Saving from Records
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If you click the menu button over the information window, you will see the
'Save' options leading off to the right. This is so long as the currently
displayed filetype has either some information of a filesprite stored in
memory, if it doesn't then this option will be greyed out. Move along to the right and another menu with two other options on it 'Save Sprite' and 'Save Data' are shown, so long as there is some of either resident in memory. Note: if there is no filesprite in the records but there is one in memory, then one may be displayed in the filesprite icon on the information window but it won't be available to save. You can use the 'GetWimpSpr' program from inside the Extras directory to save this sprite from memory. Follow the desired menu item across to the right and then drag the icon to a filer window as with any other
application. Or to save the textfile you can press F3 or to save the sprite file press Shift-F3.
b6. Loading files
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Like most other Risc OS applications simply double-click the !TypeInfo
icon in the window to start. The icon of a white box with a red arrow
pointing to a directory-like icon should appear on the icon bar. The default
filetype is &FFF and when you click on the iconbar icon with select, the
information window will come up.
By loading I mean that the information window will open and the
filetype's sprite, name if available, block of allocation, and information
will be displayed if available.
To load a file and get information about it, you can simply drag it to the
iconbar icon.
If the autoloading feature has been selected from the options window, any
file that you double-click without a runtype will be loaded.
The other way to load a file and get information about it is to hold down
either set of Ctrl and Alt keys on the keyboard while you doubleclick on a
file, whether it has a runtype or not. The information window will then
automatically open displaying information about that filetype.
b7. Autoloading
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This is a very good feature of this program. What it does (when selected)
is to check up on every double-clicked file. If that file has no runtype
(when it would normally produce a 'No run action specified..' error) then
instead typeinfo loads that file.
If however the file does have a runtype, typeinfo completely ignores it and
you will notice no change.
It is this feature that allows background operation where you never see
typeinfo until you doubleclick a no runtype file.
b8. Utility and Absolute files
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During the development of the software, I noticed a bug in the way the
software recognises non-descript filetypes. 'Utility' and 'Absolute' type
filetypes have no run action set up by the computer and as a result, when a
piece of software was run which runs one of these filetypes, the program
failed to run and the information window was opened (if the autoloading
feature was activated). This option from the option window to not load
these filetypes should nearly always be turned on unless you want your
computer to become unusable.
b9. Skimming through the files
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This is a feature that I added at the last moment in order to allow the user
to search through all the files on record quickly and without having to hold
down the left or right arrow buttons. When you select this menu item, you
will have to make sure that the menu is not obscuring the view of the main
information window otherwise you will not be able to see the file
information. The files will be skimmed through displayed one after the
other as if you were holding down the next filetype
button. To stop the skimming, simply press the space button and hold it for
a moment until the skimming stops. To make the skimming go as fast as
possible simply hold down the 'F' button on the keyboard. To adjust the
skimming rate you should read about the options window. The skimming
will only display the filetype for the skimming time set in the options
window if there is either information or a sprite otherwise it will skim past
as if you were holding down 'F'.
b10. Searches
_____________
There are two different search features encompassed into TypeInfo, both
of which are executed from the iconbar icon's menu. They can be reached
through the following menu structure (on the icon bar menu):
_________________
| TypeInfo |
†—————————————————†
| Info – |
| New Info F2 |
|–––––––––––––––––|
| Find Info F4 – | - goes to info search
| Edit Type ⇧F4 – | - goes to edit search
|–––––––––––––––––|
| Count F8 |
| Options F5 |
| Quit ^Q |
|_________________|
The 'Find Info' line brings up a window with an icon into which the
filetype should be entered (either the filetype string or the number is acceptable here). Then you can either press RETURN or click on
the 'Ok' icon. If there is some information available, it will be brought up
just as if you had loaded that filetype. Or you can press F4 to open this window.
The same applies for the 'Edit Type' line, with both search windows
looking the same (again, use either the filetype string or the hexadecimal number). But once you have entered the type to search for, instead
of the information window opening, up comes the editing window with the
data for that filetype (if it is available) present in the window ready for
editing. Or you can press Shift-F4 to open this window.
b11. Animation
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Every 25 seconds or so (well actually its exactly every 25 second,
measured in centi-seconds, you could set your watch by it) the typeinfo
icon in the info window (accessible from the iconbar menu) rotates
anti-clockwise. It can be quite entertaining to watch but other than that has
no real purpose other than for me to show of my animating skills. If it
annoys you, it can be turned off from the options window.
