PublicManager V1.2 © 1992 by Michael Watzl freely distributable as long as no profit is made with this program and all documents are included to the distribution. If you want to use this program as a part of a commercial distribution you have to ask me first! PublicManager is written with DICE (thanks Mat!) >OS 2.04 only! Read this fictive interview and you know everything about PublicManager or simply skip it. User: What does your new PublicManager do? Mike: Well, the PublicManager makes it easy to work with public screens. User: Hey, Mike! There are already tools which handle public screens like PSX. Mike: Yes, there are. But none of them has its own menu, in which the user can configure nearly everything which is possible. User: Ok. But do you really need such a tool. I mean - it just opens a screen and "shanghai"s around if you want, and you may make some programs open their windows on this screen. Isn't it a litte bit USELESS?! Mike: Well, I don't think so. Look, if you use the new features of Kickstart 2.0 like other fonts, new displaymodes, and and and, a lot of programs, tools and utilities do not support the new features: their GUI (graphical user interface) looks awful or they just won't open another screen than PAL:HIRES (flicker, flicker). Now you can use bigger fonts in WB, and open a PublicManager-Screen with topaz 80 font (maybe in productivity or ntsc:hires) grabbing all the applications windows that wanted to open on the Workbench. Your Workbench remains clean AND the tool's window is ok. But this is only one aspekt: with PublicManager V1.2 you can also configure a tools-menu. It's a little bit simple at the moment (I will improve this) but all your importand tools may be started via the publicscreen's menu! User: Ok, ok. But there are much better tools allowing me to configure my menus like the great ToolManager V1.5. Mike: Yes, you are right. But it wasn't my intention to write program like the toolmanager. The original intention was to create a utility which makes it easy for everyone to handle public screens and the toolsmenu is just a useful "goodie". User: Yeah, let's try it out! Well, maybe I'll write a little letter with bug reports, suggestions, congratulations, ... WORKBENCH TOOLTYPES: NAME= The Name of the public screen. If this screen already exists a "." will be appended to the name. DISPLAYID= The displaymode of the screen. Look at the Wbstartup/modenames file for more info COLORS= It is much easier to set the colors with the palette on the public screen and to select "save prefs" than editing the colors in the tooltype. The colors are saved in the form RGBRGBRGB... R, G, B can be from 0 to F, and one RGB builds one color. OSCAN= can be NO, TEXT or STANDARD and specifies the overscan charateristics of your screen. DEFAULT (Boolean) if this tooltype is given your public screen will be made to the default public screen. SHANGHAI Turns the "SHANGHAI" mode on It will grab any window of an application which wants to open on the wb and puts it onto the default public screen POP Turns on the "POPPUBSCREEN" mode. If a window opens on a public screen, this screen will be popped to front. BACKDROP The public screen window will open as an backdrop window like the Workbench window. FONT= WB means the same font like the wb font TOPAZ topaz.font, size 8 or "anyfont.font,SIZE", e.g. ruby.font,8 You must not use capital letters for the fontnames! SIZEX= The screens width, if not specified, the standard values (relating to the selected overscan) are taken. SIZEY= Height CONFIG= Full name (including path) of a ascii-file with the executables that shall appear in the tools menu A short walk through the menus: 1. Project: Backdrop Toggles between a backdrop window and a normal window (like Backdrop in the Workbench menu). Update Screnn Tries to close the public screen and reopen it. This is only possible when no other windows are on the screen. Update Modes Since there are other tools modifying the public screen flags and probably setting another default public screen you can update your selected modes. The modes shown by the checkmarks in the menus are used. Palette Opens a palette which allows you to change the color of this screen. The selected (USE) colors may be saved via "save prefs". About Some information about the author, the number of visitors on this screen, ... Save Prefs Saves the selected options as tooltypes. That is the reason why PublicManager must be started from the Workbench. Quit Closes the screen and exits. This is only possible if there is no other window on this screen. Preferences Default PubScreen Checked means that your public screen was set to the default public screen. To ensure that this screen is actually the default public screen you have to select "update modes" because any other program (like PSX) could have been changed this. Shanghai Enabels/disables the SHANGHAI-mode. See also at Workbench tooltypes and above Pop to front Enables/disables the POPPUBSCREEN-mode. See also at Workbench tooltypes and above. Screenmode Here you can interactively select the display mode. Remember that there must not be any window on the screen if you want to open a screen with some other characteristics. Overscan You can set no overscan, text overscan or standard overscan. To modify the overscan size you have to use the workbench preferences. Depth You can set the number of colors. Remember that in any VGA display mode (like Productivity, Superhires,...) there are only 4 colors allowed. Font You can choose between Workbench font, topaz (the standard font) and any diskfont. ScreenSize A requester will appear and ask you for the desired screen size. You may choose (nearly) any size. If the selected screen size is bigger than the overscan your public screen will be scrollable. The configuration file: It is a very simple type of configuration file. It should look like the following example: Work:tools/PSX WB:Utilities/IconEdit WB:Utilities/Clock and in the Tools Menu will appear this: TOOLS ----- PSX IconEdit Clock If you select any tool now, it will be executed (run >NIL:). Different forms of starting (like WB-Start) an application are not yet supported. ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you find this tool useful, be happy. If you don't, throw it away. If you find any bugs or if you have any suggestions for the next version please let me know. Michael Watzl Konradstr. 11 W-8850 Donauwörth Germany Tel.: (Germany) 0906 / 5834 (sorry, no modem) Support shareware!