=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Directory Opus V4.0 Short Docs ============================== by Ziggy of SDC =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= First of all, the most important feature to use in learning how to use Directory Opus V4.0 is to use the built in help feature. Just use the top, leftmost pulldown menu and select "Help!". Now you can click on any buttons or options in the pulldown menu and get information about what the function does. Select "Help!" in the top, leftmost pulldown menu again to turn the help feature off. The help feature is used in the Configuration area after you select Configure in the top, leftmost pulldown menu also,but in a different way. If you are in the Configuration program, you'll notice a question mark at the top right side of the page. Just click on it and it will bring up information about all of the buttons or fields on the screen currently. If you go into the buttons setup screen then hit the "?" at the top corner, you'll see some info. Then if you click onto one of the buttons to change the setup, you'll see a new screen. Clicking on the "?" again will bring up a totally different help screen for what you currently see! Every new screen in the config area will have a different help info screen. Now for the basics of how to use Dir Opus. At the bottom left, you will see the drive list of your system. You can scroll through this by tapping the right mouse button on top of the drive buttons. If you want to see the directory of one of the drives, just click the left mouse button on top of the drive you want to see. The directory will be shown in one of the windows. To change windows, click the right mouse button on the window area you want to be selected. The selected one is the source drive and the other is the destination drive. If you see references to areas on your hard drive that you dont want to be seen in the drives list, just load the configuration prg by selecting "Configure" on the pulldown menu then go to the "Drives" setup area. Select "Delete drive" and then click on the buttons you dont want to see. When done, click on the "Delete drive" button again to turn that mode off. Now you can use the "Swap Drive" button to move the buttons to where you want them to be. If you dont have enough buttons, just click on "New bank" to bring up a whole new button area to work with! When done, click on "Ok" once and at the Configuration main screen, save your setup by using the pulldown menu at the top left. Select "Save as" and then in the Drawer field, type S: to refer to your S directory. This is where the setup file should be saved. Now each time you save your setup, just select "Save" to save your current setup. The setup cant be saved from the DirOpus main prg remember. It only can be saved from the Configuration main screen. The same way we deleted drive buttons, we can delete button functions at the bottom of the screen by entering the button setup screen. We can add more buttons also and delete and add pulldown menu functions! To add new buttons to the bottom go to the button setup screen and select "New bank". If you choose the "Button Rows" Pulldown menu in the button setup screen, you can choose to see 0, 1, 2, 3, or 6 rows of buttons. I chose 3 because it lets me see more of the directory windows and is a good compromise. Now if you choose to have 3 also, then save your setup at the config main menu then click on "Ok" and you will see what you chose. To scroll through the button pages, just go to the status row where it tells you how much memory you have at the very bottom and click the left mouse button to scroll down page by page and right to go up. If you want to have scroll bars on the drive and button windows then go into the config area, and goto "Screen", then "General", then checkmark the "Button banks sliders" function. Click ok and then go back to the main prg and woolah! The buttons and other functions can be altered or new ones can be made which I will go through later. First goto the main prg look at the buttons All, None, Parent, Copy, etc... By using the help function you can see what these are for. By clicking on the button with the left mouse button it will execute the function it is used for. If you see a flap folded over on a button in the top right hand corner, it means the button has another function right below it! To use or see the other function, hold down the right mouse button on top of the button and if you let go of the right mouse, it will execute the function. One of the nice features about DirOpus is that you can copy files or do other functions without even having to click on any buttons!! By bringing up your source & destination windows, you can highlight many files or dirs in the source window and then immediately click the left mouse button onto the destination window and DirOpus will copy the files to that drive!! If you dont like this feature you can turn it off in the config, "Filetypes" area. Just delete the defined filetype action "DEFAULT" in the window and resave the setup at the main screen. In the same way, if you highlight an LHA arc file then immediately click the left mouse onto the destination window, it will extract to there! Double Click on an LHA, ARC, or Zoo archive to see the contents of them sent to text reader where more functions are present to print out or search for strings of text at the bottom of the screen and more! Try double clicking on an Amiga IFF/HAM/SHAM picture to show it, then hit the spacebar to print it out or to see some info about the picture! Use the cursor keys to scroll around the picture too! In addition, DirOpus is very smart. Double click on a powerpacked text file, picture, mod song or animation and it will decompress and do what it has to do! DirOpus knows how to play mods of the following types: Noisetracker, Soundtracker, Protracker, MED, Oktalyzer, regular Amiga 8SVX snd files, and Raw Data! DirOpus works with the new AGA Amiga 1200 & 4000 modes and ECS modes also!! Double click on a font and it will show you the font!!! Double click on a normal or ansi text file and it will know to use the Read or ANSIRead function automatically! Double click on an icon to see info or edit info about the icon. Highlight the icon and then click on the "Show" button at the bottom and you'll see what the icon looks like! All of these double click features work through the Filetypes that DirOpus knows. The next paragraphs will go through some examples of how to make different functions in DirOpus... How to make a double click feature example (using Filetype definition): ======================================================================= Suppose we want to make DirOpus view a DMS archive when we double click on it and send it to a window as output. Goto the congif main screen, goto filetypes, and select "New", then scroll down and select "Diskmasher archive". In the "Events..." window, select the "Double-click" option and then in the "Event Description" window, type what you want to be shown at the very top of the screen when you double click on the DMS file. I typed "Reading DMS file information..." (dont type the quotes!). Then click on "New Entry" and where you see the word "Command", click on that button to see whats there. You'll see Command (a built in DirOpus command), AmigaDos (to run a prg thru DOS), Workbench (to run a prg thru the Workbench) , Batch (to execute a script file), and Arexx for an arexx command. Leave this button selected as AmigaDOS, then goto the right and type in the cmd you want to use. In this case type the following without quotes: "c:DMS view " Make sure you have a space always after the last entry you did. Next goto the button marked {} and select it. Then you will see some functions. Click on the {f} button and then hit return on the line you had just typed. Now you should see (without quotes): "c:DMS view {f} " The {}'s function just tells DirOpus what to pass to DMS when you double click on the file. Now for the last thing... In the flags window, the only thing you want checked is the "Output window" option. In the Close Delay field outside of the Flags window put the amount of seconds to wait before it closes the window. If you put a -1 it will ask you to hit the left mouse after showing it on the screen too! Thats it, now hit "OK", and "OK" again and at the main screen, one more thing...we will change the size of the window to be as large as the screen when it is shown(by deafult it isnt!). Goto System, then AmigaDOS from the config main screen and then at the Console Field type the following without quotes: "CON:0/0/640/200/Directory Opus Output" Hit "OK" once and at the main screen save the setup. Now its all done. Double click on a DMS archive and you will see the output window! If you had wanted to send the output to the text reader so you could print out the output or do other things, just go back in and change the flags window from "Output window" to "Output to File"! How to make a button example: ============================= At the Config main screen, select buttons. Click on button to see how it is made and you'll see it is done much the same way as the previous example. Suppose we want to make a button that will use a gif viewer to look at one or as many gif files that you have selected in the dir window! At the main button screen, click on one of the emtpy spaces to make a new button. I will use a prg named Gift. Goto the name field and name the button and give it the colors you want to! Next, goto New Entry and select the button to say AmigaDOS and then type in the prg and its arguments to the right of the magnifying glass. (The magnifying glass is for you to find the file on your hard drive with the path and it will type in on the line where it is for you!). I type the following without quotes: "Gift -pcd {f} " Dont forget the space at the end! Next in the flags window, select only the "Do all files" function. This will run gift on each and every gif file you have selected in the dir window separately! Thats it! Now test it out. Save your setup and goto the main prg and highlight a couple gif files and hit the Gift button! How to extract DMS archives: ============================ Check out the "Arc Ext" button. This will extract LHA, ARC, and Zoo files when you highlight one or more arc files and then hit the "Arc Ext" button providing you have a destination window up in DirOpus! To make this button undo DMS arc files as well lets look at what the button does... With further investigation, we see that the button runs a Command called User1. Dont mix up command with an AmigaDOS command. Command is a built-in function that only DirOpus knows (such as the Show, Play, and DiskInfo commands). User1 happens to be defined in the filetypes area. Goto the Filetypes screen and click on the Diskmasher archive option you made earlier! Then in the "Events..." window, scroll down to "Command User1" and highlight it. In the event description I put "Extracting DMS archives..." (you put what you want to!), then click on "New entry" and click on "Command" to make it say "AmigaDOS". Then type the following without quotes: "c:DMS write {f} " Checkmark the options "Do all files" & "Output window" in the Flags field. In the close delay field, type 1 for a 1 second delay after everything has been extracted. Click "OK" & "OK" again and then save the setup at the main config screen again. Now go back to the main DirOpus prg and highlight 1 or many DMS archives and then hit the arc extract button and away you go!!! How to edit/make pulldown menu options: ======================================= To learn how to use the pulldown menu setup screen an example will be shown on how to edit an option already made with the default setup. Goto the config main menu, goto Menus and click on "LHA add". You will see the same familiar screen for the setup of its function as the button & filetype screens. This example will change the way Lha's add function will work to use the -2 option (the new compression method) (The default setup for LHA add in DirOpus doesnt use the "-2" option and it should be used). To the right of the "New entry" button, select the line that was typed in to control LHA and goto the right of the magnifying glass below and change it to the following: "LHA -2 -r -x a "{d}{RsEnter LHA archive name}" {O}" /\ /\ ====================================================== \/ Don't type the 2 end quotation marks! And last, goto the Flags window and unselect the "Recursive directories" option. Thats it. You can make new pulldown menu options much the same way as you made buttons, etc. Don't forget that you can use the "?" at the top of the screen for help and it will explain what the Flag options do, etc. There are many other options you can change in the way DirOpus looks in the Operation and System menus. They are generally easy to figure out so I wont go through how to do that.