ScreenX Documentation - By Steve Tibbett.

ScreenX is a program designed to be put into your Startup sequence.
It provides a number of things that are already available in different
packages, along with a couple of it's own twists.  


Clearly Written Documentation??  Come on, it's a PD program!!


ScreenX's major functions are:

 1: Provide a small clock/memory counter on the Workbench Screen,
    which will take very little processor time yet be accurate.

 2: Provide a means to recover those screens that are "Lost" behind
    those stupid programs that don't bother to put Depth gadgets
    on their screens.  IE, Chessmaster.

 3: Provide an easy way to save a screen to an IFF file (Easier than
    "Flip the screen you want to the front within 10 seconds" anyway).

 4: Give me something to do for a couple of evenings.

 5: Be small enough to be put into your Startup Sequence and not take
    much memory. 


ScreenX accomplishes all of these quite well.

ScreenX has two modes of operation:  When it is "Awake", and when it is
"Sleeping".  When it is sleeping, it is sitting on the Workbench screen
showing you how much Chip and Fast RAM you have, and the current time.
If you click in the ScreenX window (Thus activating it - You cannot tell
if the window is active or not because of the text that's being printed
on the title bar.  Just click in it and you will know it's active).  When
it's window is active, you can either hit the Space Bar or the Right
Mouse Button to "Wake Up" ScreenX.  

When ScreenX is awake, it opens up it's own Screen (Taking about 25K of
memory doing so, which is why I made the small window in the first place).
On the left of this screen is a list of all the screens that are currently
in the system, and on the right of the screen are 7 gadgets allowing you
to tell the program what to do.

These gadgets are:

   Pop Screen To Front:  This gadget will take the currently selected
                         screen and pop it to the front.  Handy for getting
                         'Hidden' screens back.

   Push Screen To Back:  If you have 4 screens in memory, and one of them
                         doesn't have Depth gadgets, you can push that
                         one to the back, and as long as you don't click any
                         of the other screens back behind it, you won't
                         have any problems.  (If you do click anything else
                         behind it, you'll have to use ScreenX to get them
                         back!)

  Update Screen List:  This will redraw the list of screens that is
                       being shown.  Necessary if any of the screens
                       there leave while you are looking at them, or if
                       new screens appear.   Note that any action taken on
                       a screen that is no longer around is ignored (even
                       clicking on it).

  Cycle All Screens:  I'll let you figure this one out on your own.

  Close Screen:  Danger.  You got it.  This isn't something you should be
                 doing unless you KNOW what you are doing.  It will let
                 you CLOSE DOWN the screen of your choice.  The problem
                 with this is that if anybody else decides to write on that
                 screen at any time, BOOMO.  What it's really useful for is
                 when a program crashes, you can close it's screen to free
                 up a bunch of Chip RAM that is taken up.  Just make sure
                 you don't go closing the Workbench down, or something
                 stupid like that.  OK?

  Save Screen to IFF File:  This gadget will instantly turn the screen Red
                            (so you know something's going on), and save
			    the screen selected into the filename in the
			    Text gadget at the bottom of the screen.
			    Note that the filename in that gadget must
			    include the full pathname, or else if you just
			    type a filename in there, it will be written to
			    the current directory.


That's about it.  If you have any problems, or any suggestions, please
give my BBS a call (if you have a modem), or send me a large box of money
with a note in it if you don't have a modem.  

Oh ya, I suppose some of you will actually want to PRINT screens with this -
that's coming.  So is a Hot Key to get the thing up any time, rather than
having to fish up the Workbench screen first.

Oh ya #2, there are a couple of command line options for this thing too.

If you run it from the Workbench, it will open the "Sleeping" window, but if
you run it from the CLI, it will assume you want the "Awake" window.  If 
you really want the sleeping window from the CLI, use the -S option.  Also,
in order to keep the clock and memory count accurate, ScreenX updates it's
little window 6 times a second.  If you find this slowing things down 
a bit, you can use the -E (efficient) option from the CLI to make it only
update the window once every 2 seconds or so.  


			...Steve

    (Feeling guilty?  Just dying to send money somewhere?  I am about
     to buy a hard disk, y'know...)

           Steve Tibbett
           2710 Saratoga Pl. #1108
           Gloucester, Ontario
           K1T 1Z2

    (or just call my BBS at 613-731-3419).
   

Addendum:

Now, whenever you pop a screen to the front, ScreenX assumes you don't want
it any more, and shrinks itself into the small window.  Just thought you'd
like to know.