MachIV  Shareware - US$15.00 by Perry Mowbray  ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### BIO-PIC: I'm a horticulture student at The Ryde School of Horticulture, I'm self-employed (which saves me a lot of time to spend studying - this was the plan anyway). I bought my 500 about 2 years ago because my sister was kicking me off her Mac permanently; I chose an Amiga because it was a cheap option. I think now, if I had known of the superiority of these machines I might have gone for a 2000 (or, wish, wish). I now have a 500 with 1 Meg of chip ram, 8 Meg of Expansion Ram, a 52 Meg GVP Hard disk, 2 Floppy Drives, a 1084S monitor and a 9 pin dot matrix printer - which all works well under WB2 (though if anyone is giving away a 2 or 3000??). With the time that I have left or can squeese in after Church, family, Tech, work, I am enjoying developing a Horticulture Programme (in AMOS: a chooser, identifier and climate assessor). I greatly appreciate Megadisc (which includes you), the common experience is a great help, eh? This is a review of version 4.1, which is only workbench 2.X compatible. Brian Moats, who created this masterpiece, stopped working on MachIII a wee while ago (excepting bugs ?!) and devoted his attention to this version. It is in appearance and function very similar to MachIII, but has a number of impressive/important changes. But for those of us who are unfamiliar with MachIII, and are wondering what I'm talking about... MachIII (and now IV), is a utility programme that sits on your screen menu bar with a time, date and memory usage display and provides you with user definable hotkeys which execute your macros. Other options available are things such as mouse blanker/accelerator/sun mouse, screen blanker, alarms, etc... it really does go on a bit. Actually, this is the main reason that I bought MachIII, it rolled all those little utilities that I had grown accustomed to, into one programme. At that time I was floppy based, and the size of these utilities was a consideration, now that I have a hard disk it's the versatility and quality of the programme that's got me hooked. I must repeat that MachIV is a workbench2 only programme (Then again, I think WB2 is a must have as well!), but if you are remaining with WB1.3 or WB1.2 then MachIII is basically the same....anyway, when you register you receive both versions! So upgrading is really not a problem. So the following is a review/comparison where I won't rehash my last review of MachIII (somewhere in the dim dark past of Megadisc), but I will point out the major differences, improvements and the features that make this package what it is. A short note on macros (for those who don't know).... A MachIV macro is contained in an ASCII file. A macro has a:  'body'  This is what is executed, and may contain MachIV functions and/or key presses (which when executed act like you have just pressed them, only it's much quicker! A Hotkey combination, consisting of:  'Qualifier' - The Control(CTRL), escape(ESC), Alternate(ALT), Shift and the left and right Amigas.  'Hotkey' - Is any other key pressed with 0,1,2...qualifiers.  'Name' - This is optional  'Flag' - A choice of six features associated with the macro and looks like this in the prefs file:  Macro=qualifiers hotkey{macro name}[flag]macro body A macro is keyed to specific key presses, eg: ESCape+Left Amiga, so that when you press ESCape and Left Amiga together, that's the cue for MachIV to execute the 'body' of the macro. Which in my case is to bring workbench to the front and run the newshell command, it looks like this: SCR_WB_TO_FRONT EXE_CMD"NewShell \"Con:0/0/640/100/NewShell/close\" Macros can be typed into the Prefs file with a text editor (the hard way!), they can be entered using SetMachIV (which will copy, paste, delete, move your macros where ever you want), or you can record you macros (MachIV writes them for you! There are some functions you can't access with this method, it's really best for recording mouse and keyboard input to be played back at some stage.) Don't worry if you don't understand, I didn't at first. But by just playing around with it, it all becomes really obvious. Anyway, all my first macros were recorded ones, I didn't know how it worked (MachIV does it all), but I made the computer do amazing things. MachIV, the differences.... The first difference that I found between the two versions is the macro function notation. In MachIII the in-built macros had supposedly meaningful letter codes, now they have very meaningful prefix followed by an underscore and then the actual function , ie: MachIII=\Xrun programme MachIV=EXE_CMD"Programme" This makes writing macros all the more easy, as it is easier to remember. In fact, the accompanying programme, SetMachIV has had a lot of improvements, and is a very workmanlike environment to create your macros now. From here all the 'other' features are handled, such as mouse, clock, clipboard and miscellaneous features, all set up so that you just point and click. All the previous functions are in MachIV, these are just the new/altered ones: Clock Functions CLK_CUSTOM_MSG Displays a message in the clock, useful for reminding yourself what's happening in a macro. CLK_TO_NEXT_SCREEN Useful if the clock stops a screen closing. CLK_METER_RESET This resets the 'modem' meter to 0 CLK_SET_RATE Sets the rate for the meter CLK_ALARM This alarm can be spoken and/or shown in the clock. Clipboard Functions These function are new to MachIV, and are useful for integrating the clipboard into programmes that don't support it. CLP_VIEW Opens a window and displays the contents of the clipboard. CLP_PASTE Pastes the contents of the clipboard to the active window. CLP_PRINT Prints the contents of the clipboard. CLP_TRANSFER Transfers one units contents to another. Execute functions EXE_AUTO As well as automatically executing at a specific time each day, or each period in the day, this function can now execute at a specific time and date (birthday's?), specific time and day (Monday-go to the bank?), and the period has been reduced to a multiple of minutes (it used to have to be evenly divisible by 60 minutes). EXE_CMD This function now has the ability to check if the programme has a window/screen open and bring it to the front, else run the programme. Graphics Functions All these functions are new to IV: GFX_CUT_PRINT Cuts and prints a graphic GFX_CUT_PASTE Cut and paste a graphic GFX_CUT_SAVE Not Implemented yet GFX_SCREEN_PRINT This is a screen dump GFX_SCREEN_SAVE Not implemented yet Mouse Functions By having these as macros, they can be changed on a 'hotkey': MOU_OFF Set the delay for turning the mouse off. MOU_SPEED Set the mouse accelerator MOU_THRESHOLD Set the mouse threshold Screen Functions SCR_SELECT Displays a requester with all open screens, the chosen one will be brought to the front. SCR_KILL Kill the front screen. SCR_WB_TO_FRONT Bring Workbench to the front SCR_WB_TO_BACK Bring Workbench to the back Set Functions SET_MOUSE_PORT For setting which port for mouse input SET_KEY Set one key to another SET_NO_LAYER For window titles not to be layered with the window layer function (which incidentally, is amazing - this layers all the open windows so that each title bar is stacked just above another, it lets you see every window at once.) Text Functions TXT_DATE_PASTE Paste the current date to the active window TXT_DATE_PRINT Print the date Window Functions WIN_CHANGE Combines changing a window's position and it's size (ie they are also separate functions), into one function WIN_ZOOM Zooms a window WIN_SEND_CLOSE Sends the close gadget message to a window WIN_SEND_GADGET_DOWN Sends gadget down message to a window WIN_SEND_GADGET_UP Sends gadget up message to a window  MachIV comes with an extra programme "AllGadgets"  which will display the number and name of all  gadgets in the open windows so that you can use  these macros. WIN_SEND_MENU Sends the selected menu message to the active window WIN_SELECT Displays a requester with all open windows, the chosen one will be brought to the front. WIN_KILL Kills a window ...and these are just the ones that have changed! As you can see, this is a very comprehensive programme. Comments.... At over 62K (uncrunched) MachIV is no small utility anymore! (MachIII was in excess of 32K). But let me tempt you with some of these features.... You can now build keyboard short cuts into any programme, when what you want is not there. This is a lot easier and quicker than the previous method of recording mouse clicks. You can string these keyboard shortcuts together into a macro. For example when I was converting old megadisc files that were crunched with least to the new powerpacker format, I had one that went like this: 1. Send a "save as ASCII" message 2. Paused until the requester came up 3. Clicked the mouse in the window (remember, the most requesters didn't come with an active cursor.) 4. Wrote "DH0:Megadisc/ASCII/" 5. Paused for me to enter the filename 6. Clicked the mouse on OK 7. Send a "Close Window" message So, all I had to do was press F10, and away it would go! Any repetitive input can be recorded and played back at will, whether it's programming code (screen openings etc) or phrases and the like. Actually, there is one macro function I forgot which is MAC_FINISH which will execute a macro based on the characters already typed. That is, you can have the AMOS screen open command ("Screen Open,1,640,256,8,Hires") attached to the hotkeys CTRL+1 and call it Screen Open. MachIV remembers the last 12 characters typed, so that if you typed "Scre" and pressed CTRL+1, MachIV would finish it for you. This is a simple case of just entering text - obviously it is only imagination that limits the complexity and productivity of your macros. New in IV is the ability to put Gadgets into the clock, so when they are selected with the mouse, the macro is executed. These Gadgets can also be icon images, which will therefore give the clock a 'dock' appearance (like Amidock, the shareware dock pro gramme by Gary Knight). This is not only pretty, but if you have lots of macros, you may want to put the ones that launch programmes into the clock so that you don't have to remember what keys do what? MachIV access the clipboard for you now and can link it to programmes that don't support it. It can now cut, paste and print graphics (screens - though not fully implemented), which negates other snap type utilities. The ability to switch screens, zoom, move or size windows etc with key presses is heaps quicker than using the mouse. The environment it creates is very friendly, with a clock, date, memory meter, mouse blanker/accelerator, sun mouse (activates the window the mouse stops over), screen blanker, all of which you can configure just the way you like it. Conclusions.... Programmes are funny things, they become part of the computer, and the computer is in very close association with most of us, so our opinions of programmes are generally very subjective. We don't like the screen colours. It doesn't do this or that. Usually fairly petty points, but to us, it's the make or break of the success of our computing environment. MachIV won't be for everyone, but because of the variability of its configuration, it's bound to appeal to more people than the plain jane variety. For these reasons I would recommend trying it out (available from Megadisc PD): Very user friendly Very configurable Saves time and effort in all other programmes Creates a friendly computing environment in all other programmes Comes with excellent documentation, free utilities and WB1.X and WB2.X versions with sample macros. Really cheap ($15) Well, there's not much else to say except, "I like it!", and I think/hope you would too.  ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ### 30 ###