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1994-11-27
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**********************************
* *
* !WimpMon - © Tom Hughes 1994 *
* *
**********************************
This software is COPYRIGHT, but has been released as FREEWARE. Please see
the end of this file for conditions of use and distribution.
About the Software
******************
!WimpMon allows a programmer to spy on applications to find out what events
they are receiving from the WIMP. In particular, it gives details of the
messages being passed between applications which can be very useful when your
program doesn't seem to be doing what you expect :-)
I wrote the original version of !WimpMon whilst trying to find a particularly
obscure bug in some of my code which turned out to be a bug in Pinboard and
not my code...
Using the Software
******************
Please note that this program requires RISC OS 3 to run, as it uses post
filters to monitor the events.
The program loads to the iconbar, and a click on the icon produces a single
window which is used to display details of the events being monitored. The
main menu allows you to select which events will be included in the
monitoring, and which tasks will be monitored.
The menu of tasks is automagically updated when a task starts up or closes
down, and ticking the 'Catch New' option on the menu causes new tasks to be
monitored automagically when they start. This option is useful if you wish to
trap events being sent to transient tasks such as filer action windows which
only exist for short periods of time.
Closing the log window will cause the output of updates to be suspended until
it is reopened, at which point, all changes which have taken place whilst it
was closed will be applied. Quiting the application will cause all monitoring
to stop cleanly.
Technical Details
*****************
The program works by using a module which installs filters on tasks when
requested to do so via a SWI call. The information it traps in this way is
then sent into a pipe in a textual form. Please note that the SWI chunk being
used at the moment is in the user area until I get a proper allocation from
Acorn.
The desktop front end is written in C, using DeskLib, and this reads the
piped data and displays details about the events in a text window. A pollword
is used by the module to inform the task when it writes information into the
pipe.
Planned Future Extensions
*************************
None. If anybody thinks of anything, please let me know.
Bugs, Misfeatures and Idoiosyncracies
*************************************
If a new task starts or an old one dies whilst you have the task menu open,
the menu will not be updated until you close it and reopen it. I havn't
changed this, as I don't think it can actually occur. If it can, let me know
how...
Thanks and Credits
******************
Thanks to everyone who's given me tips, advice, help etc, also to all the
Acorn owners I've met in the last two and a half years, and especially those
I've met since getting my Arc last year. Also to everybody whose programs
I've looked at for ideas on coding for the Wimp.
A special thank you to my beta testers, and in particular to Martin Ebourne
for his help. The beta testers were:
Andrew Hersee
Simon Burrows
Martin Ebourne
Mike Henry
Thanks to Phil Colmer for suggesting come changes after seeing version 1.00 -
I think I included most of his suggestions in the next version.
Also thanks to Jason Williams for developing DeskLib which is so much nicer
than Risc_OSLib - it couldn't get much worse could it :-)
Thanks again everyone - And may the Acorn world flourish evermore!
Copyright Notice - Read and OBEY!!
**********************************
This application is copyright Tom Hughes. It is *not* Public Domain, but it
*is* Freeware. This means that you may use it yourself, and may distribute
it to others provided that you pass it on *as is*, with all the files with
which it came. You may not distribute it any way which leads to you or
anyone else making profit from it. This means that you can only charge
enough to cover the costs of media and postage involved in distribution, and
you may not use it as an incentive to buy something else. If in doubt,
contact the author at the address below.
The author's permission *must* be obtained before this application is
included on any Magazine disc, and it would be appreciated if PD libraries
could inform the author when they are distributing this application.
Bug reports, donations, complaints, thanks, free software etc to the author
please at the following address:
Tom Hughes
5 Lampits
Hoddesdon
Hertfordshire
EN11 8EH
tom@compton.demon.co.uk