Directory Opus 5 - Secrets

              Opus Secrets and undocumented Features

    Here's the list of some pof the undocumented Opus features

*  Arrange  a  group of icons roughly horizontally, select them all
   and  then  choose  cleanup while pressing control - the selected
   icons  will  be lined up horizontally while leaving non-selected
   icons untouched.  Does not work properly vertically.  Only works
   on the main window.

*  Any  functions  defined with a # character will be executed only
   once.Eg,

         AmigaDOS      #stack 16384
         AmigaDOS      lha {v} {f}

   With the Do All Files flag turned on, the stack command would be
   executed  only  the  first  time, while the lha command would be
   executed repeatedly for each file.

*  Select  a  disk icon, then shift-right-click on it - the disk is
   added  to the list of Hidden Drives in the environment (you will
   need to save the Environment to make this change permanent).

*  The  LoadButtons  command can be used to create a Windows95-like
   Start  Menu.   First of all, create a menu using the lister menu
   editor  (so that you can have sub-items).  Save it to a new file
   (eg "mystartmenu")

   Now, using the CLI, run the LoadButtons command :

   LoadButtons mystartmenu start label=Start!

   A single button saying Start!  will appear in the bottom-left of
   the  screen; if you click on it, your menu will appear.  You can
   drag  this  button anywhere you want on the screen, and Snapshot
   it through the border popup menu.

   If  you  want a start menu to appear when you run Opus, you will
   need  to  add  the  above  LoadButtons  command  to your Startup
   script.

   If  you  specify  the  'image'  parameter  for  the  LoadButtons
   command,  the  specified  image  file  will  be displayed in the
   button.You  can  have  both  a  label and an image (the label is
   displayed  to the right of the image), or either one on its own.
   Eg,

   LoadButtons mystartmenu start label=Start! image=check.image

   You  can  even  get  rid  of the border on the start menu button
   (just  leaving  a  button  behind).  To do this, load your start
   menu  into  the button editor, turn off the 'full window border'
   option and resave it.  With the border gone you will not be able
   to  move  or  close the start menu, so you should only make this
   change when you are happy with its position.

*  The  ScanDir  command has a CONTAINER option that can be used to
   open  the  'container'  (really  the  parent) of an object.  For
   example,

   ScanDir s:startup-sequence new container

   Would  open  a  new  lister  with  sys:s/  in  it,   and   would
   automatically select the startup-sequence file.

*  The  Copy  command  has  an  UPDATE flag which causes only those
   files that do not exist in the destination to be copied.

*  If  you add menus to a filetype at priority -124, they will only
   be  shown if no other filetype matched.  This allows you to have
   a  "default  filetype"  with menus that will only be shown if no
   other filetype menus are displayed.

*  You can configure the choices displayed in the "Copy" submenu in
   the  file  popup  menu.    To do this, create a directory called
   "CopyTo"in dopus5:System.  In this directory you must create one
   file  for each item you want to appear in the menu.  The name of
   the  file  is  the  name  that  is  displayed  in  the menu (use
   semicolons  instead  of  colons,  and  back-slashes  instead  of
   forward-slashes - they will be converted automatically).  If you
   want  to  specify  a  path for the item, set this in the comment
   field.Eg,

   > list dopus5:system/copyto

   RAM; empty ----rw-d 24-Jun-96 01:34:23
   DF0; empty ----rw-d 24-Jun-96 01:34:27
   PC0; empty ----rw-d 24-Jun-96 01:34:32
   Uploads empty ----rw-d 24-Jun-96 01:42:47
   : Data:Downloads/Uploads

*  If  you  set  the  dopus/DOSPatch  variable, an experimental dos
   patching  system  is  enabled.    This   system   is still under
   development,  and  has  a number of known problems, so use it at
   your own risk.

   When  enabled, DOpus will patch several dos.library functions to
   do with the creation and modification of files (Open(), Write(),
   Close(),  SetProtection(),  etc...).  This enables it to monitor
   any  changes  to files that are in open listers, and display the
   changes dynamically.

   So  as  not  to  bog  down  the  system, Opus only updates these
   changes every 5 seconds or so.

*  If  you  set  the  dopus/FiletypeCache variable, an experimental
   filetype  caching  system  is  enabled.    This   is still under
   development, but seems to work correctly.  The major question is
   whether it enhances performance greatly.