ScreenSelect ************ Version: 2.0 , Release date: 08-Aug-93 Copyright (C) 1992,1993 Markus Aalto (1) ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) This program is freeware. You may freely distribute it as long as you don't charge more than nominal fee for copying it (max 3 US$) and no deletions is made to the original package. You may also include it to freely distributable disks such as Fred Fish collection. This program is distributed without warranty of any kind. So I take no responsibility about this program, its documentation, functionality or damages it may cause. Introduction ************ In version 2 of Amiga operating system was introduced a concept of Public Screens. These screens can be shared by application programs just like Workbench screen has been in previous OS versions. Although they bring a great addition to Amiga they also introduce a problem to users which have Workbench, several Public and propably a few custom screens open at the same time. And the problem is - "How to get that xxx screen to front quickly without traversing through 5 other screens with left-amiga m?". Well, ScreenSelect is answer to that question because it opens a small window to the active screen after hotkey selection where you can select the new frontmost screen with just a click of the mouse. Also you can make hotkey bindings to any screens (not just Public ones as in older versions) and for example get Workbench screen frontmost with only one key press. And the only requirement is that you have Kickstart 2.04 (V37) or greater. Installation ************ I have provided a script for Commodore's Installer program so if you have it then you should propably use it. Otherwise you can do following actions. * Move ScreenSelect to WBStartup directory. * Move ScreenSelectPrefs to Prefs directory. * Move one of the doc files anywhere you normally store document files. ToolTypes and CLI usage *********************** ScreenSelect recognizes normal commodity tooltypes and one of its own. CX_POPUP This switch enables ScreenSelect to open its window when it's started. Default is no popup. CX_PRIORITY=xxx This is ScreenSelect's priority as commodity. Here xxx is decimal number. Default is 0. CX_POPKEY=HOTKEY Default is shift esc. For example you could use CX_POPKEY=alt shift del to change hotkey. If you specify popkey here you override the settings you have made with ScreenSelectPrefs program. PREFSPROGRAM=PATH This is the path where preferences program is to be found. This name must include the name of the preferences program. Default PATH is SYS:Prefs/ScreenSelectPrefs. see Preferences. Main Window *********** You can see the main selection window for ScreenSelect by pressing the user configurable hotkey. This brings you a small window with few buttons and a listview with names of open screens. Public screens all have identifiable names but there are programs which use custom screens and doesn't specify any name for it. Screens like that are shown as (Nameless Screen). Quit By pressing button (or Q) you can remove ScreenSelect and any patches it has installed. About This gives you a small info about this program and its author (that's me :^). Prefs This one opens the separate preferences program you can use to modify ScreenSelect's behaviour. All changes come active instantly after you have exited preferences program with pressing either Save or Use buttons. Update This one updates the listview and default pubscreen texts to reflect current system state. This is only usefull if you haven't installed Auto Update patches. You can install the patches with ScreenSelectPrefs program. see Preferences. Listview gadget Click any of the names to get that screen to front. Single click just activates the name which you can then activate with Activate gadget. Double click makes an instant activation. Default PubScreen This one shows the name of the default pubscreen. If you have installed the Change Default PubScreen hotkey you can use it to select active public screen as your default public screen. Activate Activates the current listview selection and closes the window. Cancel Closes the window and returns back to the screen where hotkey selection was made. General Info ************ There are few special options you can change with preferences program. Here are brief explanations about them. see Preferences Screen Types Currently ScreenSelect can show only Public screens or all screens. AutoUpdate Patches This patches 4 Intuition functions to achieve automatic update in listview and in Default PubScreen textgadget. It also pretty much makes possible the use of QuickKeys because they automatically recognizes when screens are opened or closed. Patched functions are: OpenScreen, OpenScreenTagList, CloseScreen and SetDefaultPubScreen. Window Position Modes You can control the position of ScreenSelect's main window with three possible options: Fixed, Relative and SmartPointer. Fixed mode forces window to always open to some predefined coordinates. Relative always tries to position the window so that pointer is over the Activate gadget. SmartPointer first tries to position the window so that pointer is over the last selected screen name. If this isn't possible it then forces pointer to move there. Window Autoactivation You can set few options to control ScreenSelect's behaviour with window activation. If you have Window AutoActivation mode ON, it tries to activate window from screen you are changing to. It doesn't work most of the times because it just examines the windows and tries to be smart when deciding which window to activate. If also InputHandler is ON, then ScreenSelect 'hears' all the changes with window actications. This helps you only with changes through ScreenSelect. If you change screen with left-amiga m ScreenSelect has no way of knowing that you have switched to new screen except if you have added LoadView patch. If LoadView patch is active then ScreenSelect can hear all the screen changes and can always change new active window. As this one says it installs a patch to LoadView function in graphics.library. It's a very time critical place and while I haven't confronted any problems, it might be a source of problem for users with heavy animation needs. If you encounter any problems with animations you should first try to take this off before starting to look problems elsewhere. So lets go all modes through one more time. Window AutoActivation activates autoactivation mode. InputHandler option enables ScreenSelect to remember all changes with screens active windows and LoadView Patch enables to hear all the frontmost screen changes. For best possible operation I suggest you to select them all. Preferences *********** Main Prefs ========== After you have started ScreenSelectPrefs you get a window very similar to the system preferences program. All the actions from menus and Save, Use and Cancel buttons are exactly the same as in system programs so they are not explained here. Please consult your AmigaDOS manual for more info. However there are two buttons labeled as Options and Hotkeys. These are the buttons you should press to get one of the real preferences change windows. Options ======= In this window are all the options settings. Screen Types Selects one of the operation modes. In Public Only mode ScreenSelect uses only Public screens. In All mode all screens are used. Add AutoUpdate Patches Toggles the state of AutoUpdate patches. Window Position Changes window position mode. Possible modes are Fixed, Relative and SmartPointer. In Fixed mode you can set the coordinate values to Left and top numeric gadgets. Window AutoActive Options You can select which level of AutoActivation you want. If you specify all three of them you get complete automatic window activation in your system. If Window AutoActivation is OFF then you can't select either Add InputHandler or Add LoadView Patch. OK This ones confirms all the changes and returns back to Preferences main window. Note that these changes are not used yet. You have to make global confirm with Save or Use buttons. Cancel This one cancels all the changes. Hotkeys ======= In this window are all the hotkey settings. PopUp Key Used as hotkey for ScreenSelect. You can override this setting with CX_POPKEY tooltype. Use Default PubScreen Key Use the CheckBox gadget to toggle whether you want to use Default PubScreen key. If you do then write the hotkey to string gadget in right. Add Used to add new Screen Quickkey. Delete Used to delete selected Screen QuickKey. Screen QuickKeys List of screens you have set a Screen QuickKey for. Names can contain AmigaDOS patterns. For example TERM? can mean TERM1 or possibly TERM2. All standard AmigaDOS patterns are accepted. This is great help when trying to make a QuickKey for some old programs using custom screens. QuickKey Hotkey for selected Screen QuickKey. OK Confirm changes. Cancel Cancel changes. StickySelect ************ I have had several requests to enchange the interface to do some operations differently. Because some of these have been contradictory or in my opinion not something I like to add to ScreenSelect I have made it possible for external programs to use ScreenSelect's selection mechanism. Now everybody can write a replacement for ScreenSelect's interface. The first program to utilize this possiblity is StickySelect which opens a small window to any public screen with a list of selectable names - just like the one in ScreenSelect's interface. However this window doesn't go away when you make a selection. Instead it just sits there and wait's for new selection. You can open as many as you like to different public screens as long as ScreenSelect is started before StickySelect. Here are the parameters. PUBSCREEN=<> Name of the Public screen you want StickySelect to open. LEFT=<> Window left edge position. TOP=<> Window top edge position. WIDTH=<> Window width. HEIGHT=<> Window height. If you would like to implement your own interface to communicate with ScreenSelect you can contact me to obtain programming info and C source for StickySelect. see Contact address. Misc **** This is a common procedure ScreenSelect makes when it hears about hotkey selection. if hotkey pressed then if active screen is public screen then lock it and open ScreenSelect window into it. else lock default public screen and open window to it. So this means that ScreenSelect window isn't opened to foreign applications screen. It's only opened to public screens. This may annoy some users but I made this decision to make ScreenSelect more system friendly. Remember that if you select new frontmost screen then there really isn't much harm done. And even if you just press Cancel gadget you get always back to your old frontmost screen. ScreenSelect also tries to make sure that all screen pointers passed back to OS, are always valid. This is easy with public screens but requires little more work with normal screens. I hope I got it right! History ******* Version 1.0 =========== First release 07-Sep-1992. Version 1.1 =========== This version was not released. Compilation date was 14-Sep-1992. * Changed Workbench tooltypes CX_POPUP and ALLSCREENS to simple switches. They are normally OFF, but if you specify one of them then that option comes ON. * Added SMARTPOINTER option. When this one is active ScreenSelect always tries to position mouse pointer over previous screen selection. This makes it very easy to bounch between two screens. [ Suggested by Sfefan Boberg ] * Added QUICKKEYS. Now you can bind own hotkey to every public screen. This should be used only with public screens. Although it might work with all screens I don't support it. [ Suggested by Stefan Boberg ] * Now if ScreenSelect's window is active (open) when hotkey is pressed then that window's screen is brought to front. * Added menus to ScreenSelect's window. Now most of the features are selectable with Menu command keys. * Added About window to show some information. * Now previous screen's name is shown in listview gadgets selection area automatically. This makes screen bounching very easy as SMARTPOINTER option does. * Now Activate and Cancel gadgets have keyboard shortcuts. [ Keyboard shortcuts were suggested by David Corn ] Version 1.1a ============ Compilation date was 23-Sep-1992. * Fixed a bug which happened when SMARTPOINTER option was ON and screen font was too big to be used in ScreenSelect's window and we had to use topaz80. This caused pointer to be moved to wrong position. Version 1.1b ============ Compilation date was 13-Oct-1992. * Just changed a initial window height from 94 pixels to 96. Now normal topaz80 font shouldn't cause window resizing when only Workbench (or screen names of similar lenght) is in a list. Version 1.2 =========== Compilation date was 07-Dec-1992. * Previously ScreenSelect exited when it couldn't find screens. This made it impossible to put it in Startup-Sequence or User-Startup file before Workbench screen is opened. [ Reported by Andreas M. Kirchwitz ] * From now on, version number format should be Amiga Style Guide compliant. * Added AUTOACTIVATE option. * Added SCREENKEY option which allows easy default public screen selection with hotkey. * Added Default PubScreen text gadget. * First version compiled with SAS/C V6.1. Size reduced almost 2k compared to V1.1b. Version 1.3 =========== Compilation date was 27-Jan-1993. Not a public release. * Now listview is opened as wide as widest screen name. This works correctly with proportional fonts too. Version 1.4 =========== Compilation date was 02-Feb-1993. Not released. * Now gadget sizes are calculated before window is opened. So now ScreenSelect window opens to the correct size initially. * Added LEFT and TOP tooltypes and CLI-parameters. * Now if SMARTPOINTER option is ON then ScreenSelect tries to position window according to the mouse pointer. And only if it fails to properly do so it moves mouse pointer to the correct position. * Now ScreenSelect installs a input-handler to watch for WINDOWACTIVE messages, and we can properly activate right window when new screen is brought to front by ScreenSelect. Version 2.0 =========== Compilation date was 08-Aug-1993. Major update. * Whole interface code rewritten. * Moved settings to separate preferences program. * Added support for AmigaDOS patterns in QuickKey screen names. * Added Relative Window Position mode. * Moved all the patches to main program. Now patches are removable. * Added LoadView patch. * Added support for StickySelect. * Possibly forgotten something, but changes were too big to describe them fully in here. Contents of ScreenSelect distribution ************************************* Here are listed all files and directories in current version 2.0 distribution. These files should always be present when ScreenSelect is distributed. ScreenSelect (dir) Docs (dir) ScreenSelect.doc ScreenSelect.doc.info ScreenSelect.dvi ScreenSelect.dvi.info ScreenSelect.guide ScreenSelect.guide.info StickySelect (dir) StickySelect StickySelect.info Docs.info StickySelect.info ScreenSelect ScreenSelect.info ScreenSelectPrefs ScreenSelectPrefs.info Read_Me Read_Me.info Install.info ScreenSelect.Install ScreenSelect.info Contact address *************** If you really think that this program is great and you use it extensively then you can make me very happy by sending me something for a return. If you are for example a author of some software package (Commercial, Shareware, Giftware or anything) you could send me a free program as an exchange of this program. If you don't feel like it, it doesn't really matter. It would just make me more enthusiastic as I continue to implement new versions. Then again if you feel like sending a donation in US$, Deutch Marks or Finnish Marks I even might have afford to join Commodore's official developer program someday and you might get Localisation, Online-help support etc... implemented to ScreenSelect much faster that otherwise. Anyway, thank you for using this program! For suggestions, bug reports etc... You can reach me at * Internet s37732v@vipunen.hut.fi * SnailMail Markus Aalto, Muurahaisentie 11a, 01490 VANTAA, FINLAND