============================================================== - Watcher V37 - Advanced title bar watcher - ©1993 by HemSoft Developments - Requires KS 2.04 or higher - ============================================================== Copyright --------- Watcher V37 is Copyright by HemSoft Developments. Watcher.LHA may be distributed freely as long as all the files in the archive are left intact. Disclaimer ---------- HemSoft Developments takes no responsibilities for the misuse of Watcher. The use of Watcher is strictly at your own risk. Contents -------- Watcher contains many files, so let me try to give you an overview of the sub-drawers in this archive: ARexxScripts This directory contains examle ARexx scripts for Watcher. Catalogs Catalog description and translation files for Watcher. If you are using V37+ (!) you can use your favourite language! In the WatcherPrefs utility, you're able to set the langauge you want to use with Watcher. Currently only english & danish is supported. DataTypes This directory contains PD datatypes for WB 3.0. With these datatypes installed on your system, you will be able to display BMP, GIF & PCX pictures from the App Info utility build into Watcher. DataTypesFx This directory contains different pictures in BMP, PCX, GIF, HAM8 & IFF format. Gfx This directory contains the brush used by App Info. Lib Special object files used by Watcher. Libs V34 amigaguide.library to be used when running V37. This library is (C)opyright by Commodore Business Machines. Notes Watcher related notes. Prefs/Env-Archive Example Watcher.prefs to be put in ENVARC: & ENV:. Sources/Includes Include files used by the Watcher sources. Sources/Watcher Sources for Watcher. Sources/WatcherPrefs Sources for WatcherPrefs. Tools Tools used when making the Watcher app. Purpose ------- I've always been looking for a good title-bar type of program, which was able to give me the information I needed, meaning the free space on my harddrive partitions, the available memory and the system time. Sure, there are a lot of these programs, but if I finally found a program I liked, it wasn't font sensitive, or there were some other tings that were basically wrong. So, I decided to try and make something better, and hopefully you think I've succeeded. Watcher is a little title-bar utility, which can be customized to contain various information such as the free space on hard drive partitions, free memory, system time and date etc. It takes font size and overscan into account when opening it's window. Watcher can jump between public screens by clicking on it's Zoom gadget. Furthermore, you are able to modify the information displayed, by invoking the WatcherPrefs utility, which should be located in the SYS:Prefs drawer. This utility lets you customize what Watcher displays and how it should behave. More on this issue later. Watcher is also able to monitor the free space of your drives, and give you an alert whenever the free space goes below a limit you define. This is especially useful if you're watching network drives. SystemListBrowser (SLB) is an utility build into Watcher. When you activate SLB through the menu, a window pops up containing a cycle gadget through which you can choose to display Screen, Library, Device, Task, Port, Resource, Font, Volume and Assign information in the listview gadget. Clicking on an item in the listview gives you addtional information on the item in the list. App Info is another utility build into Watcher. This is an AppIcon you can drop files over in order to get information about the file. It is intented especially to get version strings from executables, and displaying pictures. App Info is datatypes aware, which enables it to display pictures of all formats, as long as you have a corresponding datatype driver for the specific picture. The datatypes stuff is only valid when running V39+. Furthermore, Watcher can be controlled from ARexx through it's "ARexx interface". Currently the ARexx implementation is rather limited. Watcher also registers itself with the Commodities Exhange system, which means that you can hotkey control it through the CX_xxx tooltypes. See the RKM Libraries manual for further information on this subject. Features: --------- Watcher knows about: - AmigaGuide. - AppIcon. - Asl Requesters. - Boopsi. - ARexx. - Commodities. - DataTypes. (V39) - Gadget help. (V37 compatible) - Locale (V37 compatible!) - Menu help. - NewLook menus. (V39) - Notification. - Pooled memory. (V39) - Public screens. Installation ------------ Copy Watcher to your SYS:WBStartup drawer, and copy WatcherPrefs to your SYS:Prefs drawer and you're ready to roll. You may want to edit the CX_xxx tooltypes of the Watcher icon to conform to your needs. !IMPORTANT! You may NOT invoke WatcherPrefs from within Watcher if you don't have a ENVARC:/ENV: Watcher.prefs file installed. Due to a bug (which I can't seem to find) you must first invoke WatcherPrefs from the Workbench and then save your settings. After that you can invoke WatcherPrefs from within Watcher if you like. Starting Watcher ---------------- Watcher can only be started from the Workbench. You can customize the behaviour of Watcher from the WatcherPrefs utility. You can start the WatcherPrefs utility independant of Watcher, or you can launch it from the menu within Watcher. WatcherPrefs ------------ WatcherPrefs is the preference editor for Watcher. Here you can set all the parameters for Watcher. As there is gadget sensitive on-line help from this program, I'll omit the documentation of this program. Whenever you're in doubt of some features in WatcherPrefs, place the mouse pointer of the gadget in question and press 'HELP'. Also, during menu session you are able to press 'HELP' to get help on a menu item. SystemListBrowser: ------------------ In the Utilities menu you'll discover the SystemListBrowser, which is a utility to list different system information such as screens, libraries, devices, tasks, message ports and resources. The cycle gadget in the top lets you toggle between the differnt system lists. To get more information on an item in the listview gadget, simply click on the item. The bottom gadget let's you update the display, since this is not done automatically. App Info: --------- Another utility that can be activated from the Watcher menu is the 'App Info' utility. This utility puts a Workbench AppIcon on the Workbench, and is intented to be used with executable files and pictures (for now). There are several ways to control App Info. You can double- click on the AppIcon itself, or you can drop other icons over it. If you double-click the AppIcon a requester will appear, asking you to either Quit App Info entirely, Load a file, or Cancel. Hitting 'Quit' will remove the AppIcon. Hitting 'Load' will put up the asl requester, so that you can choose a file to get information on. If you select an executable, App Info will try to obtain some informaton on the executable including the version string. If you select a picture, and are running V39+ of the OS, App Info will ask the datatypes system if it know the given picture type, if it does, App Info will create a datatypes object in order to get information on the picture file. A requester is then put up, where you can choose to display the picture or return. If you display the picture, simply press any mouse button to return. ARexx: ------ Watcher has an ARexx port by the name WATCHERx. The first copy of Watcher you start will have the port name WATCHER1 the next WATCHER2 etc. This is the port through which you issue ARexx commands. Currently there are 4 supported commands available: GETTITLE - Will return the current window contents. JUMPSCREEN - Will jump to the next public screen (if any). SHOWHELP - Will show the help guide file. QUIT - Will quit Watcher. Please see the ARexx drawer for example ARexx scripts. Programmer Notes: ----------------- You need to copy lib/simplerexx.o to your LIB: drawer, and replace your include:clib/wb_protos.h header file with the one supplied in the include/clib drawer. There's an error in the V39 wb_protos.h header file where the WBInfo() function returns void instead of ULONG. The header file supplied here has been corrected for this mistake. Furthermore, if you haven't already got BumpRev, then copy the BumpRev file from the Tools directory to a directory included in your path. Bug Reports: ------------ If you find any errors, have suggestions for improvements, or you simply would like to send a small donation of whatever kind, then please send it to the address below: Franz Hemmer Skolegade 21F 8600 Silkeborg DK - Denmark If you have the option, then please send email to: UseNet email: hemmer@hemmer.adsp.sub.org Please NOTE! that if some task corrupts your memory, Watcher will most likely be blamed first. This is because Watcher (im most cases) constantly checks your memory with AvailMem(). Thanks to: ---------- A big thank you is due to the following beta-testers: Steen Jørgensen sraboel@srabol.adsp.sub.org Peter Janes pejanes@descartes.uwaterloo.ca Jonas Andersson Jonas.Andersson@ludd.luth.se Markus Juhani Aalto s37732v@vipunen.hut.fi Thanos Angelopoulos ang!thanos@genly.uucp David Corn dcorn@tusol.cs.trinity.edu Mickey Everts evermic@instruction.CS.ORST.EDU Jukka Marin jmarin@messi.uku.fi Also thanks to those who I've forgotten, and to those who volunteered as beta-testers, but didn't come through.