Quick! documentation Quick! is a utility program specifically targeted at hard drive users to eliminate the frustration of launching programs on the Amiga. It eliminates the need to: 1) Open Workbench windows. 2) Remember and type in long pathnames to executables. This program is placed in the Public Domain by Adspec Programming as partial repayment to all the other Amiga Freeware/Shareware writers. Permission has been granted to Fred Fish to distribute this program and doc file in his famous "Amiga Library Disk" collection. Adspec programming makes no claims as to the fitness of this program. In other words, we aren't responsible to you if it crashes your hard drive, burns your RAM chips (including CHIP rams), etc..... Quick! MUST be started from a CLI-type environment. No provision has been made to start it as a "process". This includes IconX! Also, when started from a CLI (or Shell), the original CLI must remain open. What did you expect for a "freebie"? When started, Quick! looks for a file in the SYS:S directory named "quickmenu.def". If found, the program then proceeds to open a tiny window with a gadget that looks like an exclamation point (!). It is placed in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. It does not block the standard Intuition gadgets for Screen front/back manipulation. It has also been offset a little more to the left to allow other gadgets to be used in 640x200-sized windows (such as "zoom" gadgets) without interference. This window/gadget combination allows Quick! to appear in front of other windows on the Workbench screen if so desired. Since there are no depth arrangement gadgets for Quick!, you must arrange your other windows accordingly. Usually this is a simple case of sending windows behind Quick!. When made active (with a LMB click), it will then provide 6 columns of menus. The first menu is "Quick! Menu" and has only one item attached - "Quit Quick!" and serves as the only means to exit the program. The last five menus are user-configured and are labelled "Utilities1" through "Utilities5". Each menu contains 12 items for a total of 60 user- configurable items. The manner in which the user configures the menus is directly related to the "quickmenu.def" file. This file is an ASCII file with no imbedded control codes, tabs, etc. It is suggested that you only use ASCII codes 32 through 126. These are the "printable" codes and you shouldn't need any others. SETTING UP First, copy Quick! to you favorite cubby-hole. The SYS:C directory is recommended for convenience since AmigaDOS always looks there without any additional PATH assignments anyway. Next, copy the file "quickmenu.def" to your SYS:S directory. Once both files are in place, all that is required is to edit the "quickmenu.def" file to reflect what is actually on YOUR hard drive rather than mine. Editing "quickmenu.def" Once everything is in place, editing the file is a snap. Quick! reads the file based on pairs of lines. This is the most crucial point to editing the file. If not followed correctly, you will see strange things in the menu strips. Each line must be terminated with a linefeed (by pressing the "return" key on the keyboard). The odd-numbered lines may not exceed 11 characters due to the way in which Quick! will interpret the file. This first line is what will show up in the menu as an "item" that subsequently will be selected by the mouse. By the way, line numbers start with line number 1. The second line (and subsequent even-numbered lines) is the one that Quick! uses to execute commands. Any program that may be run from the CLI environment will also run from Quick!. For those of you "seasoned" CLI people, you are probably already aware that there are 3 ways to run an executable from AmigaDOS: 1> "filename" This method is the most frequently used if you want to single-task a program or the program automatically detaches itself from the CLI. 1> run "filename" This method will run the program as a separate task, inheriting the original CLI window for output. 1> execute "batch_filename" This final method is one of my favorites because Quick! only knows how to run ONE TEXT LINE from the "quickmenu.def" file. This allows batch file processing when you need more than one line. One good example of this is when you need to be "CD'd" to a certain directory before starting a program. This would then require 2 CLI commands instead of one and would require the use of batch file processing. One natural question comes to mind - "where do I put the batch file?" Since my S: directory has enough junk in it, I created a special directory inside the S: directory named "quick". Now when I want to execute a batch file to be started from Quick!, I just use the following line: execute s:quick/batch_filename.script Let's get a little more specific. Suppose my hard drive partition dh0: contains a path to WorkPerfect as follows: dh0:Text/WorkPerfect/WorkPerfect. Let's also suppose that I keep my text files in a different place: dh1:Text_Files/WP. And let's get really outrageous and suppose that WorkPerfect will show me the files in its file requester from the directory that I'm "CD'd" to. Here's how we would proceed with the "quickmenu.def" file. This will be our first entry, so line #1 will be the name that we want to appear as our menu item. The word "WorkPerfect" is 11 characters long, so we can use it for a menu item. Line #2 will contain the directions to Quick! on how to launch the program. We want to execute a batch file, so here's the first 2 lines of the file: WorkPerfect execute S:quick/WorkPerfect.script We would then save this 2 line file as "s:quickmenu.def" and create the batch file named "WorkPerfect.script" like this: cd dh1:Text_Files/WP run > nil: dh0:Text/WorkPerfect/WorkPerfect -s Then save this file in the S:quick directory. Notice the "-s" option in the batch file. Since Quick! uses a linefeed character to determine what should be used to start a new task, anything before the linefeed is fair game to be used as command line flags. Once these 2 files are created, go to a CLI and type: 1> run Quick! You'll see your menu item "WorkPerfect" and it's ready to execute. Highlight the item, let go of the mousebutton and you're off! You should get a pretty good idea of what the program will do by looking at the files that I have included. Support C'mon now. This is P.D. Well, okay. My name is Shane Earl and I wrote the docs for this little beauty. I will answer questions about this program through written correspondence ONLY! Got that? Good. Do NOT bother Adspec Programming with problems, questions or money (Sorry Greg. I put more time in on the docs than you did for the whole program, so I get to keep the money. Yeah, right! :). Anyway, I won't guarantee that I'll be at the following address forever, but as of January 1991, this is it: Salem Amiga Users Group Attention: Shane Earl P.O. Box 7023 Boardman, OH 44512-7023 All rights reserved, blah, blah, blah.......