M A G N E T I C P A G E S: Organiser (V1.30) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ This program is used to arrange the articles of your magazine into the desired order. Basically this involves creating an ordered list of article filenames and their parent pages. This list is saved as a control file that the Displayer uses. Running the Organiser ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Organiser can be run from the CLI or Workbench. To run it from the CLI, simply type in its name. To run it from Workbench, double click on its icon. Using the Organiser ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Organiser is used to make a list of the articles contained in your magazine. Each entry has the AmigaDOS path/name and a Parent. The Parent is the article in the list that a reader will be taken to when they use the 'Contents' command in the Displayer. Below is a sample Control File. Number Article Name Parent ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ 1 articles/TitlePage 2 2 articles/MainContents 1 3 articles/Editorial 2 4 articles/ArticleContents 2 5 articles/Using the Editor 4 6 articles/Reviews 2 7 articles/Magnetic Pages 6 If a reader, reading a review of Magnetic Pages (article 7) selected the 'Contents' command, they would be taken to Reviews (article 6). To get back to the MainContents (article 2) they could again use the 'Contents' command. Menu Commands ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Just about all commands are accessed through menus. Most commands have keyboard equivalents, which can be used when you become familiar with the Organiser. Project New - Allows you to create a new list from scratch. The current list will be erased. If you haven't saved the current list, you will be asked if you want to continue with the operation. Open - Allows you to load a control file from disk. A file requester will prompt you for a filename. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - O Save - Allows you to quickly save any changes to the current control file. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - S Save As - Allows you to save your current list as a control file. A file requester will prompt you for a filename. Print - Allows you to print out the current list. Make sure you have your printer set up before you use this command as it begins printing immediately. A small window is opened which contains a gadget which allows you to stop printing. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - P About - Information about the Organiser and the registered owner. Quit - For when you've had enough. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - Q Edit Cut - Allows you to remove one or more entries from your list. These will be stored in a buffer so you may then Paste them into the list at a new position. This command is only available when one or more entries are highlighted. See below for more information on this. The two primary uses for this command are to delete one or more entries from the list or to shift one or more entries within the list. To shift a group of entries, you first use the Cut command and then use the Paste command to insert the group into its new position. When doing a Cut/Paste sequence the Parent values are adjusted correctly. For instance, when you Cut out an article that is a Parent to other articles, then the other articles will have invalid Parent values. Any invalid Parent values are represented by 'xxx' in the Parent column. Note that you will not be able to save your list while it contains invalid Parent values. If you then Paste the Parent article back into the list, the invalid Parent values will be corrected and will point to the new position of the Parent article. If you don't Paste the Parent article back into the list and do another Cut or Copy operation, then all invalid Parent values will be changed to 1. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - X Copy - Copies the selected entries into a buffer. You can then use the Paste command to insert them into the list. Like the Cut command this command is only available when one or more entries are highlighted. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - C Paste - Copies the contents of the buffer into the list. This command is only available if the buffer is not empty. If none of the list entries in the visible window are highlighted, then the contents of the buffer will be Pasted onto the end of the list. Note that if there are highlighted entries in the list but not currently visible onscreen, the buffer will still be pasted onto the end of the list. To insert the buffer into the middle of a list, first select the list entry you want the buffer to be inserted before and then use the Paste command. Note that unlike the Paste command used in Wordprocessors, highlighted entries are not replaced by the contents of the buffer. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - V Add - Allows you to add a new entry to the end of the list. A requester will be displayed that allows you to enter an AmigaDOS filename and a parent value. First enter a filename. When finished press return and you will be taken to the parent gadget. Enter a value and press return. If you entered an allowable parent value, the new entry will be added to the list and the requester will be removed. If the value was out of range, the screen will flash, and the parent value will automatically change to 1. You can now enter another value. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - A Insert - This command is almost exactly the same as Add, except you must first select an entry in the list. The new entry will then be inserted in front of the selected entry. Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga - I The Edit Command ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This command allows you to edit an existing entry in the list. There is no menu for this command. Instead, you simply double click on the entry in the list you want to edit. A requester will be displayed and you can edit the entry exactly as you would using the Add or Insert commands. If you edit an entry with an invalid Parent value (denoted by 'xxx') you will see some weird negative number in the Parent gadget. You can leave this alone if you intend to Paste the buffer back into the list at a later date or you can change it to a correct value if you wish. Highlighting Entries ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By clicking on an entry in the list, you can highlight it. Click on it again and it will be unhighlighted. You can highlight a group of entries by clicking on an entry and then moving the mouse up or down the list while holding the mouse button down. If you move the mouse past the top or bottom of the list window, then the list will scroll automatically. This allows you to highlight more entries than can be displayed in the window at once. Notes ~~~~~ It is sometimes possible to end up with parent values in your list that are out of range. eg you have a list of 20 entries but some entries have parents with values of 25. There are two known ways of doing this. Firstly if you copy an entry from a list with a parent greater than one, use the New command and then Paste the entry into the new list. The other way involves copying an entry from a large list with a large parent value, loading a smaller list and Pasting it into the smaller list. If you do end up with parent values out of range, you will not be able to save the list until you correct them. Although there is no specific command for Appending two control files, it is quite simple to do. Simply load the file you want to Append, Copy it to the buffer, load the other control file and Paste the buffer onto the end of the list. Mark Gladding.