4]----------------------------------- 3]THE SHELL GAME: A Continuing Column 3]Part One of A Newcomer's Eye View 3]Workbench Fundamentals 3]By Brad Webb 4]----------------------------------- This month we're beginning a series of Shell Games dedicated to the newcomer's point of view. While this column normally concentrates on the Shell and the CLI, in this series we will examine the Workbench thoroughly as well. For today's exercises you will also need a blank disk. One fresh from the box will do nicely. 3]BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING The fact that you're reading this shows you already know quite a bit about how an Amiga works. You know how to start the computer, insert a floppy disk, "open" the disk and double-click on an icon. If that statement isn't true, then I really want to know how you came to be reading this! What we're going to do over the next three months or so is build on that foundation until we're sure that any new Amigan who has been with us for the whole trip will be quite comfortable in the Amiga world. Along the way we're bound to cover several things you already know. Please bear with me, as there's certainly someone reading this column who will find the information valuable. Some readers may benefit from a discussion of window resizing. Most windows opened from the Workbench, Shell or CLI can be made bigger or smaller as you wish. If you aren't familiar with this feature of Amiga windows, try this (read the instructions through first). While you are reading this column on its own screen, the one that the JUMPDISK icon first appeared on still is in your computer, it's just behind this screen. This window is not resizable even though most Amiga windows are. On the Workbench screen the JUMPDISK window is a standard, resizable window. We'll use it to play with for a moment. The first thing you need to do is simultaneously press the left Amiga key (the A key left of the space bar) and the N keys. You will find yourself looking at the Workbench screen with the open JUMPDISK window. In the lower right corner of that window is a "gadget" that looks like two little squares. (It's a triangle on 2.0 screens). Place your mouse pointer over this box, press and hold the left mouse button and move the mouse around. Presto, you are resizing the window! Press the left Amiga and M keys simultaneously to return to this screen. Go ahead and try all that now. OK, you are now familiar with one way of moving from one screen to another on the Amiga and with window resizing. That's a good start. We will discuss a more commonly used method of switching between screens in a moment. First though, what to do about icons that become hidden when you make a window smaller? The Amiga's answers to that problem are scroll bars and scroll arrows. On the JUMPDISK window you just worked with you will see a "scroll bar" on the right hand side and the bottom of the window. There is an arrow on each end (1.3 and earlier) or two arrows on the bottom (2.0). There is also a "slider" in the bar. The slider is the area of the bar that is of a different color from the background of the bar. When the window is full size only the slider is visible. The background shows when you resize the window small enough to hide some of the icons inside it. The size of the slider roughly indicates the proportion of the window contents you can see. You move the slider by placing the mouse pointer over it, holding down the left button and dragging. You can also scroll around in the window by clicking on the arrows. Take a few moments to experiment with these gadgets. Go back to the Workbench screen (Amiga N), shrink the window a bit and then scroll about with the sliders and the arrows. Make the window several different sizes to see how the slider size changes. 3]FORE/AFT GADGETS AND DRAGGING WINDOWS In the upper right hand corner of most windows you will see some small gadgets. The type and use of these varies between 1.3 and 2.0 Workbench, so we will have to keep each in mind as we continue. Begin by opening two windows on the Workbench screen. Besides the JUMPDISK window itself, open the Ad directory window by double clicking on the Ad drawer icon. Go ahead and do that right now, then pop back here again (Left-Amiga N and Left-Amiga M). There are two gadgets in the upper right of both windows, whether you are using 1.3 or 2.0. Their purposes vary from one to the other. Under 1.3, the gadget on the right moves the window it belongs to behind all other windows. The one next to it moves the window back to the front. 1.3 users, go ahead and pop back to the windows and play with those gadgets a bit. You may have to drag the windows around some so you can get at the gadgets, especially when using the "bring to front" gadget. To drag a window, place the mouse pointer on the bar across the top. Press and hold the left mouse button and roll the mouse. The entire window will move unless it is too large (use the resize gadget we just talked about if you run into this problem). Users of 2.0 can drag a window the same way. The fore/aft gadget setup is different though. In your case, the far right gadget does both. Clicking on it when the window is frontmost moves it behind any other windows. Clicking on it when it is rearmost moves it to the front. Pop back to the Workbench screen and play. Move the windows around by dragging, and use the fore/aft gadgets until you are comfortable with them. You will notice a fore/aft gadget (2.0) or a set of two (1.3) on the Workbench screen as well on the windows which lie on the screen. The Amiga is capable of displaying more than one screen, just as it can display more than one window. This may seem confusing at first but it is powerful. We have used the Left-Amiga N and Left-Amiga M key combinations to move between screen so far because the screen you are now reading has no fore/aft gadget(s). Take a moment and use a combination of Amiga N and the gadget(s) on the Workbench screen to pop this screen and the Workbench's fore and aft a few times. Most, but not all, windows have fore and aft gadgets. Many screens do too, but many do not. Therefore, you will probably use a combination of Amiga N/M and the screen fore/aft gadgets to navigate among screens. A moment ago you dragged windows around with their "drag bars", the bar across the top. Some screens have drag bars as well. The Workbench screen is one that does. Just for fun, move it to the front then grab its drag bar and pull it down (screens can't be moved side to side, only up and down). You will reveal this screen behind it. The ability to drag screens up and down and to pop them fore and aft is an important one to know. 3]CLOSING WINDOWS, ACTIVE AND NON-ACTIVE WINDOWS When you have several windows on your screen, only one at a time will accept mouse clicks. This is called the active window. You can spot the active window by differences between it and the others. Under 1.3, the drag bar takes on a "ghosted" look when a window is non-active. Under 2.0, the drag bar and frame of the active window are a different color (bright blue in the default scheme of things.) When you are working with icons and the Workbench itself, as we are today, it isn't too important to know which is the active window. The act of clicking on an icon in a window will also activate the window, so it's automatic. However, when we work with Shell and CLI windows it becomes very important. I'll introduce you to both those windows in an coming column. So, at the very least, pop to the Workbench screen and activate and de-activate a window or two to become familiar with the differences. When you get 18 or 20 windows on your screen you may find it a bit confusing. You might be surprised how few windows some other window-based computers can display. There is no hard and fast limit with an Amiga. You most likely know how to close a window, since you got this far, but let's review it for the sake of completeness. The Ad window should still be open. Please re-open it if not. Click once on the gadget on the left end of the drag bar and -- poof! -- it's gone. 3]2.0 ICONIFY GADGET 2.0 users have another way of reducing the clutter of windows on their screens. Next to the fore/aft gadget is an iconify gadget. Click on it once and the window shrinks to a pre-determined small size. Click on it again, and it resumes its larger size. If you resize the window when it is shrunk or when it is open, it will use the new size(s) you created when you next change it back and forth with the iconify gadget. It will also remember where you dragged it in either large or small version and jump to the appropriate location. Users of 2.0 should pop to the Workbench screen and play with the iconify gadget at this point. Try everything we just discussed. Change the size of the window in shrunken and open modes, move it in both modes, and play with the iconify gadget again to see for yourself what it does. 3]FILE AND DISK COPYING It is simple to copy files and even entire disks from the Workbench. As before, please read through all the instructions, then pop to the Workbench screen and try them. First, let's see how you copy a file from one disk to another. In the JUMPDISK window you will see an icon that looks like a copyright sign. It is for the Copyright file. Place your mouse pointer over that icon, press and hold the left mouse button. Now, drag the icon over the RAM DISK icon and release it. The mouse pointer will change into its "thinking" image for a moment. When it becomes an arrow again, open the RAM DISK by double clicking on its icon. Inside will be revealed a copy of the Copyright file. Simple, hmm? Go ahead and try that at this point. Making a copy of a file on the same disk is less often done but nearly as simple as copying a file to another disk. We don't want to do this on an original JUMPDISK, so first I'll show you how to make a copy of a disk. You must have a blank disk at hand to do this exercise. Close the JUMPDISK window and any others to make it easier to see what is happening. Now click ONCE on the JUMPDISK icon to highlight it. Press and hold the RIGHT mouse button. Several words will appear on the Workbench drag bar. While still holding the mouse button down, 1.3 users should move the pointer to the word "Workbench". 2.0 users move the pointer to the word "Icons". A pulldown menu will appear. Keep holding the button, and slide the mouse pointer down the menu till the Duplicate entry (1.3) or Copy (2.0) is highlighted. Release the button and follow the instructions that appear in the popup requester windows. Click on the gadgets in the windows to continue, etc. Source disk is the disk you wish to copy, Target disk is the blank disk that will receive the copy. When you are finished, you will have a disk named Copy of J. To change the name, click once on the new icon to highlight it. Using the same menu technique as before, go this time to the word Workbench (1.3) or Icons (2.0). Select "Rename". A type-in box will appear. Using the cursor keys and the delete key, change the box contents to show just the J part of the name. Press the RETURN key. You now have a JUMPDISK copy with the same name, J, as the original. Use it for the next file copy exercise. Copying a file is much like copying a disk. Double-click on the JUMPDISK copy icon to open the disk. Highlight the Copyright icon with a single click. Then, using the same technique as with the disk copy, select Workbench/ Duplicate or Icons/Copy, depending on your version of AmigaDOS. You will wind up with a copy of the Copyright file. You can change the name just as we did the disk copy, but don't try to change it to match the original in this instance. Since the original is in the same window as the copy, they cannot have the same name. 3]MOVING A FILE INTO A DIRECTORY As long as we have the Copyright copy, let's see how to move a file from one drawer (also called a directory) to another. "Grab" the copy by placing the mouse pointer over it and pressing, and holding, the left mouse button. Drag the icon on top of one of the drawers in your JUMPDISK window and release the mouse button. The icon will move to that drawer. We have now seen that you can open any disk or any drawer, grab an icon in it, and move it to another disk or drawer by placing it on top of the appropriate icon and letting go. Quite a handy procedure. 3]FORMATTING A DISK There is one more topic I want to cover this month and then I'll let you off the hook until next time. Everyone needs to know how to format a disk. All floppy disks, when purchased, are unformatted. Before you can store information on the disk, you must format it. Formatting prepares a disk for data storage by adding some index marks and similar information, so the computer can organize information when it writes it to the disk. The reason disks are shipped unformatted is that different computers use different schemes for organizing their data on disks. If disks were shipped formatted, there would have to be a separate type for every computer made, and for every type of disk drive available for every computer. Disk prices would be astronomical. When you perform a disk copy as we did a moment ago, the disk is formatted during the copying process. That's all well and good, but the end result isn't a blank disk and a blank disk is what you want for your word processor files, database files, and so on. Formatting to create a blank disk can be done with a disk just out of a box or a previously used disk. When a previously used disk is formatted, all existing data is removed from the disk with no hope of recovery. This is fine if you wish to re-use a disk, but don't do it accidentally! Let's see how this works. We'll use the copy we just made of JUMPDISK. Place the disk to be formatted, the JUMPDISK copy (NOT YOUR ORIGINAL!) in the computer's disk drive. A disk icon will show up on the Workbench. Click once on the icon to highlight it. Using the same technique as when making a disk copy, pull down the Disk menu to the initialize item (1.3), or pull down the Icons menu and highlight the Format Disk... selection (2.0). Release the mouse button. Follow the on-screen prompts. When the computer indicates the formatting operation is complete, wait for the red light to go out on your disk drive. Then open the disk icon with a double click. That there is nothing in the window, verifying the data is all removed. The gauge (1.3) or the window drag bar (2.0) will verify that the disk is empty and ready for use. 3]NEXT TIME... We have had a good tour of the fundamentals of the Workbench this time. Next time we'll take a look at the pulldown menu items of the Workbench in more detail. There are major differences between the way these menus are organized under 1.3 and 2.0 AmigaDos, so we'll also get a chance to compare the two. 4]END OF TEXT