Club Amiga de Montreal - CAM/CAM_CD_1.iso/files/632.lha/BrowserII_v2.04demo/BrowserII.tutorial1E

Text File | 1992-04-27 | 14KB | 429 lines

Tutorial.


BrowserII is a powerful tool; it offers a wide range of
capabilities. A step-by-step approach will allow you to smoothly
get familiar with its functions and capabilities, in order to be
able to discover more of them when you will need them.

At some point in time, you will wonder how you could manage to
live without it !

We strongly recommend that you print this tutorial so you
can conveniently go through its steps.

First of all, let us make sure that BrowserII is properly
installed. To keep it simple, we'll start BrowserII by
double-clicking its icon. Lest's assume you have copied BrowserII
and its icon in your Utilities drawer. Next we check that the
arp.library, the parm.library and the req.library are present in
the LIBS: drawer. If you just copied these three libraries from the
distribution diskette, we advise you to reboot , just to make sure
that you have the most recent versions loaded in memory. This will
be particularly useful if you already used earlier versions of
those libraries.

1. The Basics.

Following your double-click on BrowserII's icon, its main window
has popped up in the lower right corner of the screen. You should
see in there some of the volume names of your active disk units.
Use the right slider gadget to scroll through all the names.

For the time, let's imagine that you have a system without hard
disk, and with only one floppy drive ( oh dear ...). A copy of your
Workbench diskette is in df0:. In such a case, what we see in the
BrowserII main window is two lines:

MyWorkbench      ( for instance )
Ram Disk

Ready to go!


1.1. Copying files.

Double-click on the MyWorkbench line in BrowserII's main window.
A new window opens in the upper left part of the screen, you can
see a part of the names of the diskette's directories.

Again in the main window, double-click on Ram Disk.

A third window pops up, you should normally read there:

clipboards
env
t

unless you have modified your startup-sequence. In this case,you know
how to use a Shell,  please make a "t" and a "clipboard" directories
in the Ram Disk.

Double-click on the t line. Move the window which just opened down,
just under the Ram Disk window.

Double-click on the clipboards line in the RamDisk window, pull the
new window under the two first ones.

Back to the MyWorkbench window, locate the L line and double-click
it. In the window you see among others some  xxx-handler files.

All the steps described up to now should not have taken more than a
minute.

We are now ready for some exercises on copying files. Let us copy
the aux-handler in the Ram Disk:t drawer.

Click on aux-handler in the MyWorkbench:L window, hold down the left
mouse button. The name of the file now appears in inverse
video,which indicates a selected file. A little pointer with two
crossed arrows has replaced the normal pointer. Drag it into some
free space in the Ram Disk:t window, release the mouse button.

The file has been copied; please notice that the original file is
still in the L: drawer.

Now perform the same operation to copy the aux-handler file from
the Ram Disk:t window in the Ram Disk:clipboards window which is
just underneath. Notice that this time the file has been moved from
one window to the other.

The rule is: by default, this method for copying a file moves the
file when the two drawers belong to the same disk unit, and leaves
the origin file intact when the copy takes place across two units.
This mode is called Context mode.

Does all this ring a bell ? It exactly duplicates the way copies
are made when dragging icons in the Workbench screen.

[ Now, to start from a clean situation, let's erase the copy of
aux-handler in the Ram Disk:clipboards window. Click on it to
select it, then press Right Amiga - D. A requester asks for
confirmation. Make sure you train yourself to read these requesters
before clicking on Delete for a file, or Delete all for a drawer
and its whole content. ]


1.2. Multiple copy.

Back to MyWorkbench:L. Hold down the left Shift key, click on
aux-handler, port-handler and speak-handler. Holding down the left
mouse button, drag the special pointer into the Ram Disk:clipboards
window, release the shift key and the mouse button. The three files
are copied in one move.

[ If you accidentally released the shift key after having selected a
file, and if you click again on it, you will deselect it. By
default, the selection works on a toggle mode. Please also notice
that after a copy, the origin files are deselected.]

You can now, if you want, delete the three destination files by
selecting all three the same way we just did it in order to copy them,
and then pressing Right Amiga - D.



1.3. The Windows.

Hold down the shift key; click in the closing gadget of the Ram
Disk window. It will close, and the two windows just below will
close as well. This method will  enable you to close all the
windows belonging to a disk unit, in one single operation.


1.3.1. Resizing windows.

Upon opening, Browser's windows display four lines of information.
If your file names are short, there are two columns. You can scroll
through all the names using the right slider gadget.

Watch the left boarder of the window. There is, just under the
closing gadget, a small cross-hatched gadget which does its best to
look like a window. It is the iconification gadget. We'll come back
to it. Right underneath, there are two thin vertical bars; these
are two gauges which we'll study in the second part of the
tutorial.

Under these gauges are two hidden gadgets. In the upper half, the
expand gadget, in the lower half, the shrink gadget.

Go to the MyWorkbench window, and click somewhere in the upper part
of the gauges, not so high up as to accidentally hitting the
closing gadget. The window opens up just enough to show you all the
files and drawers it contains.

Click in the lower part of the gauges, the window will shrink back
to its original size.

You can have the windows to automatically open to the expanded
size.

Go to the BrowserII -> Options menu; you can see that none of the
lines

Windows AutoZoom
and Windows AutoZoom Dirs Only

is checked.

Check the Windows AutoZoom Dirs only option.

Close the MyWorkbench window and open it again. This time it opens in
the expanded mode but just enough to display the subdirectories.

Now go back to the Browser->Options menu and check the Windows
AutoZoom line. Close the window, re-open it. This time it opens to
such a size that all subdirectory and files do appear.

In order to get this to happen all the time, go to the BrowserII
menu, and activate the Save Config item.

As an exercise, please go take a look at the content of the Devs:
drawer, you should find there a new file called BrowserII.config,
in which your new option hast just been saved.

Now expand the main window.

Find in the BrowserII a submenu called Display with
three items:

Devices
Volume
Assigns

Check these items one after the other, or any combination
of them ( they are not mutually exclusive ). Watch the main window.

What you will see may help you remember the differences between
the concepts of physical or logical units, and volume names.


1.3.2. Iconifying windows.

BrowserII offers to you the unique feature of enabling you to work
with more than two windows. However, with many windows opened, your
display might easily degenerate into a nice mess. Rather than
closing a temporarily unused window, and maybe have to reopen
a whole hierarchy of windows in order to get it back, let's iconify.

Open the following windows:

Ram Disk
Ram Disk:clipboards

Then close the Ram Disk window.

Click in the iconification gadget of the Ram Disk:Clipboards
window. The window is gone, but where ?

With one of Browser's windows being activated, press F5.
A new window, named Alien, pops up in the lower left corner of the
screen. There is a "Clipboards" line in the window. Double-click
on it to re-open the Ram Disk:Clipboards window.

The Alien window may be closed, and reopened, it never loses its contents.

By the way, there are three ways of opening the Alien window:

pressing F5
pressing Right Amiga - L
or through the Window->Open menu.

Remember that in all cases one of the windows of Browser must be
activated.

Many functions of BrowserII may be activated by several alternate
methods. Look in the docs !!!


1.4. Save your configuration.

At this point in time, we would advise you to configure BrowserII
so that the windows, upon their opening, expand to show all
subdirectories and files.

In the BrowserII -> Options menu, check Windows Autozoom.
In the BrowserII menu, select Save Config.

Now let's leave BrowserII. Click in the iconification
gadget of the main window; it then iconizes itself. The iconized
window ( very tiny in the upper left corner of the screen ) has
a closing gadget. Click in it.

More simply, select Quit in the BrowserII menu.


Restart BrowserII by double-clicking its icon.

The main window will still open at the same size ( four lines ),
but the other windows will now open and expand just enough to show
all files and subdirs.

Now look into your Devs: directory. You will find there a new file
named BrowserII.config.



1.5. Customize your menus.

BrowserII has three "proprietary" menus, namely BrowserII, Windows
and Actions.

We are going to add two more, very simple ones, in order to be able
to edit command scripts, and later execute them.

[ If you have used the Install script of the distribution diskette,
you already have a more complete array of menus. In this case, just
check that what we recommend to add during the coming exercise,
already sits there. ]

Open a shell, type CD Df0:s CR, then Ed BrowserII.menu CR.

If you use another editor, fine; this tutorial has been written
for the user who has at his/her disposal only the Commodore
diskettes which come with the machine.

Type the following lines:


COLOR 0
        MENU "Text"
        ITEM "Ed" SHELL c:Ed
        MENU "Shell"
                ITEM "AmigaShell" RUN NewShell

Type Esc x CR to close Ed and save the menu file.

Select the "Update Menu" item of the BrowserII menu.


You now have a menu with two additional sections, Text and Shell.

Let's test it.

Open the MyWorkbench window,  open the S window,
select the line "BrowserII.menu".

Go to the Text menu, select Ed. Ed will open up and show you the
contents of the selected file. Leave Ed.

You are now able to create for instance a Pictures section in your
menus, with as an item your preferred display program, in order to
be able to view your pictures from within BrowserII.

Go to the Shell menu, activate the AmigaShell item, you should now
have a Shell window open, with a size of 640x100. Close it right
away, this was just for checking purposes.



1.6. To execute a command.

In the BrowserII->Cmd Mode menu, check the Simple item.

In the BrowserII menu, select Command , or press Right Amiga - C.

[ Don't forget that one window of BrowserII must be activated in order
for the keyboard shortcuts to work ! ]

In the text box of the requester which comes up, type

dir df0: opt a

and click OK, or press CR.

This command will take some time to execute. As soon as it has
finished its work, the window which it opened closes.

Now check the Shell item of the BrowserII->Cmd Mode menu.

Launch the same command

dir df0: opt a

This time, at the end of the execution, the Shell window will stay
open to enable you to read the results, until you hit CR.

We will cover in the second chapter of the tutorial an other
interesting property of the Shell mode, i.e. the ability to
simultaneaously execute several command, thanks to the unique
asynchronous mode of BrowserII.

As a last exercise on commands, select the Command item of the BrowserII
menu, and type

avail; info CR

The two commands will execute in succession, but alas the window
was too small to display the whole information.

Let's fix this.

Bring your BrowserII.menu file into the editor as above, and add
a first line to it:

CMDWIN "CON:0/0/640/256/Your command, sir..."

Save the file, ask BrowserII to take this new menu into account
( item Update Menus of the BrowserII menu ).


Activate BrowserII->Command

type  avail;info CR

and enjoy the view.



1.7. To launch a program.

Double-click on the Utilities line in your MyWorkbench window.
Double-click on the Clock line. The clock shows up. Just the
same way as when working with icons.

[ A word of warning:

A command of the C: directory (e.g. Avail ) is an executable file,
just like Clock.

Find it and double-click it.

Again a window will appear and close without leaving you any time
for reading.

Whenever you will launch a program which does not open its own
output screen or window, but wants to tell you something, BrowserII
will open a default window for it ( note that it is not the "Your
command, sir..." window ) but when the program is through its job,
it will exit, and BrowserII will close the window. Commands like
the C: directory commands, which are normally opened from an
already open Shell, and rely on it to display information, should
be launched through the Command item of the BrowserII menu. ]



1.8. A well-deserved rest.



That's all for this first section of the BrowserII tutorial.

You are now capable of the following:

* opening BrowserII windows with a size which fits your needs
* expand them, shrink them, iconify them
* copy, move, delete files
* set up a custom menu
* save your options
* launch commands and programs
* view and edit text
* view pictures.

It is now time to practice at this level, read the docs, try things.
In the second part of the tutorial, we'll go through more niceties of
BrowserII.