Workshops / Background reports / Book introductions
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Workshops / Background reports / Book introductions
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(Preliminary remark: Because the changes described below need a file "workbench.catalog" in your language, in the following the denominations of the menu items are given in my language, German. In your language you will have to choose the relevant expressions.)
Sometimes it is good, if you're not using the standard, because the simple method described hereafter unfortunately has one disadvantage: It only works if a catalog file is opened! That means users of the (internal) English version of the Workbench cannot utilize it. My (perhaps unprofessional) attempts to install an English catalog file ended without success, the Workbench just did not use it.
It's been years since I put in my Tools-drawer the program "CatEdit", version 1.2b (oder 38.951, in the program different version numbers can be found) from March 1995 by Rafael D'Halleweyn. I use the program to adapt catalog files a bit. After starting, kind of an editor is opened, where catalog files can be displayed and edited. I do not want to cover all of the possibilities, because the program really is easy to handle after you have made yourself even a little bit familiar with the setup of catalog files.
If I recall right, keyboard shortcuts have been available for the execution of Workbench-menu commands since AOS3.5. But it wasn't until AOS 3.9 that I noticed that though RAmiga-J cleaned up the contents of a window, you needed a menu to adapt the size and to snapshot the new settings.
In other programs, I had in my mind for instance the RexxReqTools extension of ARexx, keyboard shortcuts are easy to install, and I hoped that this would work with the Workbench as well. Because in the menu the keyboard shortcuts are set beside of the localized words, I looked at the file "workbench.catalog" in the path SYS:Locale/Catalogs/Deutsch/sys/ with CatEdit and bingo, there was what I was looking for. In the WB-menu "Fenster - Inhalt aufräumen - Nach Spalten" there is the letter "J" behind an inverted "A". With the search function of the editor of CatEdit I discovered the string "Nach Spalten" and in front of it the characters "J0". At most of the other items the position held by the "J" was empty.
I checked which keys were not occupied (and in the meantime I discovered the assignments in the OS3.9-FAQ), looked for the string "Größe anpassen", typed a "G" in front of it, did the same with "alles" (of menu item "Fenster - Fixieren - alles"), but here I typed an "X" (but I have changed it to "H", because on the keyboard this is next to "G" and "J") and saved the catalog file. At first I was sceptical it could all be this easy, but it was. Immediately after a reset, to clear the catalog file from memory ("FLUSH" is not sufficient, because the Workbench locks the file in memory), I not only could clean up a drawer with a key-press, but as well adapt the size and snapshot all of it.
Do this and it is possible to assign keyboard shortcuts to all free menu items. And of course changes are possible if you do not like the default letters. But you should avoid double use of letters, even if this seems not to produce any system errors. Apparently when using a shortcut all positions are searched in series, and only the first one found is executed.
Gernod Schomberg <g.schomberg@t.online.de>
