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BrowserII.tutorial2E
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BrowserII. Tutorial ( cont'd ).
We assume that you have sent your contribution to the authors, and
that consequently you are running version 2.02 or higher.
This second part of the tutorial will be less "step-by-step", you
should have gone through the first part and at least have glanced
through the doc.
2. Advanced functions.
Through three exercises, we are going to look into some interesting
capabilities of BrowserII.
In what follows, we will use the following semantics:
ACT BrowserII->Options->Windows AutoZoom
means: activate a menu item, or verify that an option in
a menu is checked
CMD dir opt a
means: bring up the Command requester through
BrowserII->Command or Right Amiga - C
then type the commant text in it and click OK or press CR
There is still a copy of your Workbench disk in df0:
We call it "MyWorkbench".
In the BrowserII->Options submenu, the following items are checked:
Keep Selected
Toggle Selections
Move Files into Subdirectories
Ask before moving Files into Subdirectories
Asynchronous Action
Windows AutoZoom
In the Browser->Cmd Mode menu, Shell is checked.
2.1. Asynchronous mode.
Please perform:
CMD dir > ram:tutu df0: opt a
CMD list > ram:toto df0:c
You don't need to wait for the first command to finish before to
launch the second one. The proof of their simultaneous operation
is in the bad grinding noise coming out of your df0: drive.
This is a rather dumb action, but it shows the point.
Let's do something more sensible.
CMD dir > ram:tutu df0: opt a
While this command executes, go look in the Ram Disk for the contents
of the Ram:tutu file, by selecting the appropriate line and
launching the editor through the menus, like we did in the first
part of the tutorial.
You see here a big difference between BrowserII and most Directory
Utilities, which can generally perform only one task at the time.
You will be able to do simultaneously such things as copying
from one drive to another, format diskettes, move files etc., the
number of simultaneous actions is not limited to two.
2.2. The gauges on the left boarder of the windows.
A little bit of preparation.
Let's create in the Ram Disk a directory calles ApplePie, which
will contain 4 files named q1 to q4.
Open the Ram Disk window.
ACT Actions->Makedir ApplePie
In ApplePie, create with Ed or any editor a file saved as q1
which contains any short length of text.
Open the ApplePie window, a file q1 sits there.
ACT Actions->Duplicate
in the requester, change q1 to q2 and click OK.
The same way, create the q3 and q4 files.
Put in df0: a freshly formatted disketted, named e.g. MyDisk.
Open its window.
We are ready to look at the gauges.
2.2.1. Left gauge.
Look at the leftmost gauge in the various windows.
In the Ram Disk window, it shows "full" ( I won't talk about
colors, because of the color mixup between 1.3 and 2.0 ).
That's OK, the Ram Disk is always full, as it adjusts its size
to its actual content.
In the MyDisk window, the left gauge shows "empty", but if you
make the window as tall as possible, you will see something,
in case you have formatted the diskette with a Trashcan.
Now take look at the left gauge of the main window. It always
repeats the info given by the gauge of the active window.
Go through the various windows and verify this.
2.2.2. Right gauge.
This one is likely to give two different types of information,
according to the item checked in the BrowserII->Options submenu.
2.2.2.1. First mode.
ACT BrowserII->Options->Display Directory Disk Usage
The gauge says how much space is occupied on a disk unit respectively
by the subdirectories and the files of the root directory.
In fact it works differently than the name suggests.
Look at the MyWorkbench window. Most of the content of the
diskette is in subdirectories, the gauge shows close to "empty".
In the Ram Disk window, delete the files "toto" and "tutu"; there
are now only directories in Ram: the gauge is fully down.
Let's copy to the Ram Disk Window all the xxx.info files of the
MyWorkbench window; the gauge goes up.
2.2.2.2. Second mode.
ACT BrowserII->Options->Proportion of Visible Data
Copy the xxx.info files of the MyWorkbench window into the ApplePie
window.
This window contains only visible files, the right gauge shows
"full".
Activate this window.
ACT Actions->Filters->No .info
The xxx.info files disappear. The right gauge now shows very close
to "empty", because the q1....q4 files are very small.
Now copy the file Ed from the C directory of the MyWorkbench
diskette in the ApplePie window, the gauge goes up, but not the
full way up, which tells us that there are in this drawer some
files which are not displayed.
Close the ApplePie window, and open it again. This time all files
show up and the gauge says "full".
3. The Filters.
The submenus and items of the Window menu are rather easy to
understand, we will concentrate on the Filters submenu. The generic
action of the filters is to control which files will be displayed
in a window, by defining criteria for appearing
Close all windows, except the MyWorkbench one.
ACT Window->Filters->Set...
Here comes a new requester.
In the upper part, ther are two boxes where you see the words
Files and Dirs, followed with an Y. If you click on a Y, you see
that there are three possible choices: Y, N and ?
Y for: always displayed
N for: never displayed
? for: displayed if criteria are met
So, if you select two Y's or two N's, the filters will be
inoperative, in the former case all files will be displayed, in the
latter, the window will be empty.
Thus, select ? in both boxes.
in the Pattern box, type *l* or #?l#?
The window lists all files or directories whose names contain
at least one time the letter "l".
ACT Window->Filters->Invert
Now you see only the names of files and directories which contain
no "l".
ACT Window->Filters->Clear
All files and directories are back.
Now that you got the mechanics of it, refer to the doc and make
exercises.
4. The Custom Screen.
If you are the lucky owner of a multisync monitor, or if you have
any other solution to reduce the effect of flicker, why don't you
try:
ACT Workbench->Screen->Custom Interlace.
BrowserII opens its own screen in hires interlace mode. The quantity
of displayable information becomes very interesting.
[ However, there is one side effect:
if you launch a program, or try and look at a text with your
editor,
either the program or utility opens its own screen which pops up in
front of Browser, that's OK
or it opens a window in the workbench screen, which is then hidden
by Browser's screen, and you could derive the impression that
nothing happened. In this case you will have to send Browser's
screen to the background via your preferred method. It will be
the case in particular for AmigaDos commands.
Consequently, if you use the custom screen, give preference to
utilities like MuchMore or Mostra which open their own screen.]
5. Your comments, please.
We thought that a program with very wide capabilities like
BrowserII might be more easily approached through a tutorial.
It is difficult for such a tutorial to be a real help for both
the beginner and the seasoned Amigaman.
So, why don't you drop us a line to tell us wether we achieved
an acceptable balance.
Your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Now, enjoy BrowserII !