--------------------------------------------------------------------------- MENU 1.0 (C) Nedersoft 1990 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Program : Menu V1.0 Description : Small utility that let's you easily create menus for your own collection disks, compactings, etc. Works with mouse, joystick and keyboard. Possibility to work with parameters. Multitasking. - History - MENU was original programmed for MS-DOS systems by Patrick "Tune Up" Huitema & Wilco "Wop" Ophof for Nedersoft. This version (7.0+) has more options than the current Amiga (V1.0) version. Maybe we will release an update in the future, but it's up to you ! This menu was programmed by Patrick "Tune Up" Huitema & Wilco "Wop" Ophof, two of the best MS-DOS programmers around, who also own an Amiga (They have seen the future of computing and the name was AMIGA!). They saw a need for a quick and easy to use menu to make your DOS-life (and that of your friends) easier. After a quick programming evening in late June '90 MENU 1.0 was finished for the Amiga, and as usual such an event was celebrated with typical Dutch delicacies as Super Shoarmas and Boeren-patat and to round it off, we watched some video nasties with lots of blood and gore. Yes, we like a wholesome combination of garlic and ketchup to lighten our mood. Don't worry, we will take care that we don't grow too fat, since fat people are lazy programers who don't keep their promises (right, Jos?). - How does the menu work ? - Very simple ! You just pick the option you want by using : Mouse - Put the mouse-pointer on the option you desire and hit a mouse button to select a function. Joystick - Select an option by moving your stick up or down (I bet you're familiar with this movement) and press FIRE. Keyboard - Select an option with cursor keys (up and down) and press return. - Note to advanced Amiga Users - We know that you hate long docs, but you will need it to use Nedersoft Menu V1.0 correctly. If you are an advanced CLI user, try the examples on the original Nedersoft menu V1.0 disk. - How do I create a menu ? - Find a disk with your favourite text editor, start the program and create a file called NEDERSOFT.MENU. In this file you will have to enter the commands that make the menu function. Don't worry, the commands are quite simple, especially if you take the time to look at already made menus. Let's assume you want to create a disk containing two different kinds of programs. One directory is filled with crunchers, the other one is filled with virus killers. How would you go about? The first commands in the NEDERSOFT.MENU text will put your text in the top and bottom lines of the screen. The line on the top is called the HEADER. To change the text of the header, simply enter: Header=Utility Disk Number One (c) by Nedersoft The bottom line will normally indicate the amount of memory left and display a copyright message and is called the STATUS line. If you want to change this, it's easy. Just make your second line: Status=I don't care about memory, I got a four meg AMIGA! and the next time you run menu the status line will have changed. The header and the status command are optional, it is not necessary to put them in the NEDERSOFT.MENU text; they're only there so you can customise your menus a bit. After creating your own header and status texts, it's time to create the first menu options. Let's assume that there are three crunchers on your disk in the directory CRUNCHERS. The virus killers are hidden away in a directory called KILLERS. We want to be able to select the type of program we want to use from the main screen and select the individual files from a sub menu. This is how a NEDERSOFT.MENU would look like: Header=Utility Disk Number One Status=I don't care about memory! I got a four meg AMIGA! Go to Crunchers! ; OPTION text cd :CRUNCHERS ; Command Go to Viruskillers! ; OPTION text cd :KILLERS ; Command "Go to Crunchers!" is just a piece of text that will be displayed on screen in a little box. Since it's just text, you can put here anything you like as long as it makes sense to you. This is called the option text. The next line will start with an empty space, so that MENU will know that there are some Amiga DOS commands coming up. If you leave out the space before a command, MENU will assume it's another option text. In this case it's a built-in command called cd, just like the similar Amiga DOS command and it will change the root directory to the directory CRUNCHERS. The same goes for the next two lines. You can use more than one command after the OPTION text. Now you have to create two several submenus, one for the crunchers and another one for the viruskillers. Create another NEDERSOFT.MENU text and put it in the CRUNCHERS directory. Here's what it could look like: Powerpacker 3.00 ; OPTION text PPacker ; Command Tetrapacker 4.x ; OPTION text Tetra ; Command Turbo Imploder 4.0 TIP Go back to Main Menu ; This will switch you back to cd : previous directory and menu. You can do the same for the virus killers. The NEDERSOFT.MENU in that directory could look like this: Seek and Destroy 1.3 ; Option text Seek1.3 ; Command System Z Viruskiller 6.0b ; etc. SZ6 Virusbasher 2.51 VBasher Aids Virus II killer AVII_Kill Go back to Main Menu cd : If you have looked at these commands carefully, you will have discovered that each time you change the root directory in MENU, the program will attempt to read in the new current NEDERSOFT.MENU from the new directory. Each Menu screen can contain up to 40 different option texts, divided into up to four columns of ten options, which is more than enough for most purposes. But what if you want to use more than 40 command strings? No problem, it's very easy to work your way around this "limitation" by putting new NEDERSOFT.MENU files in other directories. Each column can have a separate head, apart from the header in the top line. These headers are called HEAD1 to HEAD4. The correct way to use these headers is: Head1=The first row. Head2=The second row. Don't use more heads than there are columns. If you include two heads, but there's only one column worth of options (less than 10 option texts), the heads will be displayed as one single line above the option column. Just like the Status and Header command, the Head* command can be used to display more information, like "Make a choice!" or whatever. Another important feature of MENU is the ability to input parameters. What is the use of a dir command if you can't indicate which drive you would like to scan? You could make an option that would look like this: My FIRST option Dir %% ^^Give device name (df0:,Ram: etc) The %% tells Menu that there is a user-parameter involved. The ^^ tells Nedersoft Menu what he must display in the requester box. So if your select this option, a box will appear asking you: "Give device name (df0:,Ram: etc)". When your input is RAM:, you will get the ram directory listed. You can only ask for one parameter, but you can also ask for a part of a parameter as well. My FIRST option Dir DF%%: ^^Give drive number (0-4) If you answer with 0 your will get a dir of df0:, if you answer with 1 your will get a dir of df1: If you think you must go into an awful lot of trouble just to get one single collection disk in working order, we have provided you with another useful program, called EXE2MENUV1.0. This utility will look for ALL executeable files in your parent directory and will put their names into the NEDERSOFT.MENU file. Your header will be the name of the Directory or Disk The following option works only on BIG AGNUS Amigas, the ones that give you 1 Megabyte Chip Mem (Great! Deluxe Paint III never looked so good!) and more problems with badly written software (!@#$%& !! Not another software failure!). We included this feature, because we think it is important that Amiga software should keep up with hardware developments (and because mr. Huitema has a Big Agnus in his machine). AGNUS=ON This command will blow up a NTSC screen to PAL format. AGNUS=OFF This command will turn the screen to its normal size and settings Another nice feature is the ability to turn off your power led. Use the following command to perform this astounding feat of human ingenuity: LED=OFF Turn it on with this command (Surprise, surprise): LED=ON APPENDIX A: KEY TO MENU FUNCTIONS Pull down menus: About Name of the programmers and version number. Quit Quit Menu and return to old task Options A quick overview of the above NEDERSOFT.MENU file options Built-in Amiga MENU Commands: Header= Changes the top line. Status= Changes the status line. Head*= Changes the text above row one. (*) can be 1, 2, 3 or 4. Agnus= Switch NTSC/PAL. Only ON and OFF are allowed. You need a Big Agnus in your Amiga to make use of this feature. CD Changes root directory. Led= Turn on/off led. Only ON and OFF are allowed. Keyboard short-cuts: HELP Brings background screen to the foreground. Esc Quits program. Cursor keys Moves highlighted item across screen. Return Select item. Checks: Checks for RUN in c directory (will NOT execute without it)