The Learning Curve

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Text File | 1992-09-23 | 14.7 KB | 276 lines

MENU ITEMS & HOW TO USE THEM ---------------------------- Move the Mouse Pointer to the top of the screen,press the Right Mouse Button and hold the Button down.Now move the Pointer across the top bar & you will see 4 sections - Workbench,Window,Icons and Tools. Now move the Mouse Pointer Up + Down the columns,there are quite a few options on show, but what do they mean? Open the CLI Window and type - show menu and a picture will be shown displaying the Menu. Press the Right Mouse Button once and this will return you back to the Workbench Screen. Row 1 Under the Workbench Heading --------------------------------- Backdrop - Release the Mouse Button over this causes the Top Bar and the Surround to dissapear.If you like this setting,use the Snap - Shot menu item in the Windows column.For directions how to use this,look at the Snapshot Description in the Windows Heading. Execute Command - This item allows you to execute an Amiga DOS command without having to use the Shell Window (Like CLI). After you've entered the command,press the OK Button with the Left Mouse Button to start it up. Redraw All - On rare occasions,a program which you use through Workbench may cause the Workbench screen to become corrupted (Fuzzy or slightly distorted Text,Icons etc.),this menu item draws the Workbench screen back to it's original state. Update All - This item Redraws each open window,nothing really to see unless you are using the Shell and Workbench together.Does a similar thing to Redraw All. Last Message - If you have made a mistake or missed something out (which is common!),a message appears telling you "Error.." or "Cannot find..". Doesn't the message flash before your eyes too fast sometimes? and you don't have time to read it properly,leaving you confused. Releasing the Right Mouse Button on this item,will display the last message so you can read it at your own pace. About - Choosing this item will generally tell you of the Kickstart and Workbench versions,so you know what you've got. Quit - Select this and a Requester Box appears asking if you want to quit the Workbench - Click on OK if you want to and Cancel if you've made a boob! Row 2 Under the Window Heading ------------------------------ New Drawer - On the old Workbench (1.2's & 1.3's) you had to type "New Drawer etc." in the CLI window. With this item you just release the Right Mouse Button over "New Drawer" and it puts a new drawer in the Workbench Window (The terms "Drawer" and "Window" are discussed in the Windows Section), then a Requester Box appears asking you what you want to call the drawer. At present it is called "unnamed",if you wish to give the drawer a different name,hold the backspace key down and all the text will be deleted.Type in what you are calling the drawer and click on OK or just press return. Open Parent - A parent in Computer terms,is where the smaller drawers and Windows have come from or Files usually come from parent directories.When you open your Workbench disk,that is the parent window,if you open for example the System drawer, you get a smaller window containing other programs. The WORKBENCH window is the PARENT window of the SYSTEM window. This is where Open Parent comes in. If the Workbench is closed and you are working in a different drawer,select Open Parent and the Workbench will open and the screen will come to the front open. Close - If you have finished using a window from the Workbench disk and you wish to remove it,just select Close - Making sure the window is active before. ( See the Active Window section in "Windows") Update - If you make changes to the contents of a window through the Shell or "Execute Command" menu item,you won't notice them until you close and re-open that window. Using Update will show you what the Window will look like without having to close & re-open it. Select Contents - When you choose Select Contents,all the Icons in that particular active window are selected (Like you have clicked on them all at the same time). Clean Up - This arranges the Icons neatly in an order.When Icons are copied or created,they sometimes appear on top of each other,this sorts them out. Snapshot - This saves the position & arrangement of a Window.There are 2 sections of this item - Window and All. Snapshot-Window will save a position of an open window,but not the position of the Icons. You are told about positioning a window in the "Windows" section. Snapshot - All will save the positions of both the Window and the Icons. Show - Make sure your Workbench screen is active and select Show All Files this will give Icons to all the Directories in your disk.These are not true Icons,just example Icons to show the Files. To display only the true Icons,select Show Only Icons from the menu View By - This item changes the way the information is described on your Workbench screen. View By Name changes the window display. The window now contains a list of the files on the disk,in Alphabetical order. The list contains the size of the file,whether it can be Read, Deleted,Executed or Written (rwed) and the date it was created. View By Date sorts the files by date and puts them in order of the most recently created files listed first. View By Size sorts the list by size. The smallest files first. Row 3 Under the Icons Heading ----------------------------- Open - To open an Icon is to make the items within the Icons available for use. Select an Icon,then select Open and the Icon opens displaying it's contents. Copy - This item allows you to copy disks,programs,files or drawers. How to copy a disk (Back Up): The disk that you are copying from is known as the SOURCE disk,the disk you are copying to is known as the DESTINATION disk. The destination disk can be a disk which you no longer wish to use or a blank disk. The disk MUST be WRITE-ENABLED, so the information you are copying to this disk can be accepted. (The tab should be covering the hole in the corner of the disk). Let's start: Make sure your SOURCE is Write Protected (See Below), put the Source disk in your Amigas disk drive,select the Icon,choose Copy from the menu,the Amiga will ask you to insert Workbench2.0 disk,don't worry the Amiga has to find the Copy Program within your Workbench program. If the Disk Copy process is going to take 5 or more disk swaps,a box will appear telling you,just click on the Continue Button. When using the single Amiga's Disk Drive,the Amiga will read part of the disk and then after a while ask you to put the destination disk,so it can copy the infromation it has taken from source disk and copy it to the destination disk. ********************************************************************** * IMPORTANT: ALWAYS WAIT UNTIL THE DISK DRIVE LIGHT IS OUT BEFORE * * REMOVING DISKS. THIS APPLIES WITH ANY SOFTWARE YOU ARE * * USING. * ********************************************************************** After a few disk swaps,the copying process will be finished. If,for example you have copied the Workbench Disk,your previous blank disk should now be called copy_of_Workbench2.0 . You obviously don't want the words copy_of on your disk,so rename the disk using the Rename menu item. (See Below) You should always keep your disk WRITE-PROTECTED once you have finished copying & renaming.This means that you should move the plastic tab over so you can see a gap through it (at the top of the disk).This will prevent any further information from being written to the disk or removed by accident, (Same principal as a Video Cassette Tape).This especially prevents a Virus from another disk (if it's present) being transferred your disk. Rename - Use this item to change the name of an Icon. Select the Icon and then choose Rename from the menu. HINT:If you use the Cursor Keys (The 4 Direction Arrows to the right of your main keyboard) to move the blue box to where you want it to start deleting & then use the backspace key (Above the Return key) to delete what you don't want,it saves you having to type out the whole lot again. Also comes in handy if you have created a disk called My Data and it becomes full,you can Rename it to My Data 1 so you can start another disk called My Data 2, My Data 3 etc. Information - First select an Icon and then choose Information from the menu.This will give you information about the chosen Icon. You will be presented with a box with these catagories on it: name,image,size,stack,last changed date,script,archived, readable,writable,executable and finally deleteable. What does all that mean? NAME gives the name of the disk and it's description (whether it's a Disk,Drawer,Project,Trashcan or Tool Type). IMAGE shows a Picture of the Icon and is displayed in the centre of the screen (Below it's name). SIZE shows the number of blocks & bytes that the disk,project or tool uses. (This doesn't apply to drawer icons). STACK is the amount of memory reserved for a specific tool. (Does not apply to drawer or disk icons). LAST DATE CHANGED tells you the date that particular Icon was created or the last time it was changed. SCRIPT: If this is selected & the program is executed through the shell,it will run as a text file of AmigaDOS commands. ARCHIVED: This is set by some backup programs to let you know that a file or directory has been saved or Archived. READABLE: If this item is selected,you can read or access the information in a file. WRITEABLE: If this item is selected,you can write information to the file.However,if the item is not selected (No tick in box) you cannot make changes to the file. For example,if you make the file readable and not writeable,you can read the files but you can't change them in any way. EXECUTABLE: When you select this item,you can execute the project or tool. DELETEABLE: When this item is selected,it makes the tool,file etc. able to be deleted.If you deselect this item (No Cross) this makes the file exempt from deletion (You can't delete it). Snapshot - This item saves the positions of all currently selected icons on disk. UnSnapshot - If you made a mistake when positioning the icon(s),just select the icon you want to put back in it's previous position,and select Unsnapshot. Leave Out - This item allows you to move an icon out of it's original Window and into the Workbench Window.Only the Icon moves to the Workbench window,the files and directories remain in their original windows from where the Icon was taken from. Put Away - After using Leave Out,you can return the Icon to it's original drawer by choosing Put Away Delete - This item lets you erase files and their Icons.Once you delete an Icon & File you cannot get it back. Select the Icon you wish to delete,then choose Delete from the menu.A Requester Box appears warning you about that you can't get back a deleted item. Choose OK if you wish to delete & Cancel if you've made a mistake. You can't delete a Disk Icon or the Trashcan Icon. Format Disk - If you put a new blank disk in your Amiga,you will get a disk icon with DF0???,DF1??? Or DF2??? at the bottom of the disk icon (Depending which drive you have the disk in). The reason for this is that the drive does not recognise the disk as an AmigaDOS disk.So you can use the disk,it must be Formatted for AmigaDOS. To Format the disk: Put the disk in any drive,select the disk icon and select Format Disk from the menu.Even if the disk is in the drive already,a Requester Box appears,allowing you to switch disks (if you need to),press Continue to proceed. If you Format a disk with Data on,make sure you no longer need this Data,as when you format a disk,you lose all the previous information. The Requester gives you 3 options - OK, OK-QUICK & CANCEL. All Amiga 3.5" Disks have 80 Tracks on them - numbered 0-79. The OK Button will format all 80 Tracks the OK-QUICK formats just the Root Block Track and the Cancel Button ceases the formatting process. The OK Button is more thorough than the OK-QUICK Option but OK-QUICK is much quicker. Empty Trash - I explain about the Trashcan use in the Windows section. What you do with this, is you select the Trashcan Icon and choose Empty Trash from the menu and this deletes all the contents of the Trashcan. Row 4 Under the Tools Heading ----------------------------- Reset WB - What it says really.If you've had Icons & Drawers out and you have finished using them,select Reset WB and it will reset your Workbench Screen.