hold ---- Documentation for version 1.43b, on September 14th, 1991 by Bruno Costa WARNING Although this program is freely distributable (see COPYRIGHT below), I would appreciate if you take the time to write me a line or two (E-Mail please) if you are using any of my programs or if you have any kind of ideas or suggestions (This is not too much to ask, is it?). If you feel particularly generous, I would like to receive a disk with any useful programs you have written, preferrably with source. Thanks! DESCRIPTION Hold is a background utility primarily designed to hold down the right mouse button for you. This means that, to access a menu, you may just *click* the right mouse button, browse through the items (withouth having to hold any button), and when you are done, just *click* the mouse button again. Users of the original Commodore mouse, whose switches where not very stable (specially after some use), will appreciate this program. This does not mean that users of better quality mouses (like the A3000 one) will not benefit from the use of this program. Hold provides an additional utility: window auto-activation (SunMouse-like). Note that both functions of Hold have an extra level of compatibility with normal Amiga applications (unlike many known similar utilities), minimizing the conflicts of this utility with the interface expected by most programs. The window auto-activator, for instance, will not try to activate the window under the mouse pointer when you are moving the mouse. Instead, it will do that just after the mouse is quiet for a while, minimizing the overhead of meaningless and frustrating activations that were not desired. The menu-button-holder is smart enough to know when you are clicking the menu button (it will hold the button for you then) and when you are holding the button yourself (it will do nothing in this case). So, if keep selecting menus just like you did before (holding the button instead of clicking it) you will not even notice if Hold is installed. Note also that both options can be disabled, so that you might use just one of Hold functionalities if you wish to. Hold works both under WB 1.3 and WB 2.0 (although it is not a commodity). OPTIONS usage: Hold [-a] [-h] [-q] [?] Option '?' gives the small usage message above. Option 'a' is used to disable the auto-activator, and option 'h' the menu-button-holder - the default is to install both things. Option 'q' is used to remove Hold from memory. EXAMPLES To install Hold (with both the auto-activator and the menu-button-holder active), use: > Hold To de-install Hold: > Hold -q BUGS Special care has been taken to minimize conflicts with existing applications. Two main areas of conflict exist: some programs treat the currently active window as special (Workbench, for instance), and other use the right mouse button for purposes other than selecting menus (like Deluxe Paint). The first problem is minimized by the way the auto-activator works. If you want to cleanup a window in Workbench, for instance, you may activate the window (by moving over it) and move (without stopping) to the menu bar, immediately pressing the menu button and selecting cleanup; or you may activate the window, press the mouse button (hold or click) and select cleanup. In both cases, the original window will be kept active, so that cleanup will behave as expected (this is partly due to the fact that both functions are performed by the same program: if you use just the menu-button-holder of Hold and an external auto-activator, deadlocks may occur). The second problem does not exist if you *hold* the menu button for a while to do what you want, e.g., to draw a freehand line in Deluxe Paint using the background color, you would hold the right mouse button, move around and then release it - this works either using Hold or not. On the other hand, if an operation needs a click in the right mouse button the problem will become noticeable. If you needed to strike a brush in the background color in Deluxe Paint, you would normally need to click the menu button just once; with Hold installed, you would need to click it twice. This kind of problem could possibly be minimized even further by examining the window flags to see if a particular window uses menus or not. AUTHOR The accompanying program and this documentation were written by Bruno Costa. He can be reached in the following ways: E-Mail: bruno@brlncc.bitnet (InterNet) bruno at BRLNCC (BitNet) Mail: Bruno Costa Rua Almirante Guilhem 454/102 bloco 1 Leblon - Rio de Janeiro RJ 22440 BRAZIL COPYRIGHT This program is copyrighted by Bruno Costa. It may be freely distributed if and only if the source code, the documentation and the executables are provided in original form. It may be included in Public Domain/Shareware compilations, like the one organized by Fred Fish, as long as just a nominal fee is charged for each disk (no more than US$10 per disk), and may also be uploaded to BBS's or network services like BIX and CompuServe. DISCLAIMER The author makes no warranty of any kind with respect to this product and explicitly disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose.