PublicManager V1.4 © 1993 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 SAS/C 6.2 >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 8 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 V1.4 you can also configure a tools-menu. User: Ok, ok. But there are much better tools allowing me to configure my menus like the great ToolManager V2.0. 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, ... --------------------------------------------------------------------- A short walk through the menus: 1. Project: =========== Update Screen Tries to close the public screen and reopen it. This is only possible when no visitor 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 public mode window are used. Toggle Workbench Tries to close the workbench screen. This will save chip memory. (Works only if there are no application windows on the wb screen) About Some information about the author, the number of visitors on this screen, ... Save Prefs Saves the selected options as 'Publicmanager.prefs' in the home directory of the main program. PublicManager no longer should be started from workbench. Quit Closes the screen and exits. This is only possible if there is no other window on this screen. 2. Preferences ============== Public Modes... --------------- Opens a window with 3 checkbox gadgets. - Default Publicscreen If selected it makes the PublicManager screen to the default public screen. If not the workbench screen will be the default public screen. - Pop publicscreen to front Sets the POPPUBSCREEN flag. This means that the public screen will be brought to front if a window opens on it. - Shanghai Sets the SHANGHAI flag. All the windows (like shell window, application windows which would open on wb, ...) will appear on the default public screen. Public Name... -------------- Here you can specify the public screen name. With this name you can force windows to open on this screen although the shanghai flag is not set, e.g. 'NewShell CON:0/0/640/200/PublicShell/SCREEN' Palette... ---------- Opens a palette requester. Screenmode... ------------- Opens the screenmode requester (lores is no longer supported). Font... ------- Opens the font requester. Menus... -------- Opens the Menu configuration window. (See below) 3. Configuring the Menus ======================== a) Menus (left side) -------------------- Gadgets: -------- New Creates a new menu named 'new menu'. Edit Opens the 'edit menu' window. (the window can also be opened by doubleclicking a menu name) Up Moves the active menu one step upwards (if possible). Down Moves the active menu one step downwards (if possible). Remove Removes the active menu. Sort Sorts the list of menus. Edit window: ------------ Name Here you can edit the menu title. Disable If selected the menu (and all the items) appear disabled (ghosted). b) Items -------- Gadgets: (also accessable via SHIFT + underscored key) -------- New to Sort is the same as above. Barlabel Appends a barlabel to the items list. Edit window: ------------ Alias The name which will appear in the menu. Name string gadget: Name can be manually edited. button gadget: Opens a file requester. If a file has been selected the filepart will be used for the alias and name gadget; the path will be used for the driectory. If there is an icon the stack will also be set to this value. Directory string gadget: Directory can be manually edited. button gadget: Opens a directory requester. The selected directory name will be copied to the string gadget. Arguments Here you can insert special arguments for this application. Example: Name: Newshell Args: CON:0/0/640/200/SpecialShell Disabled If selected the application's name will appear ghosted in the menu. ----------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES: V1.2 First release as FD. V1.3 Internal revision: - Editing tools with GUI - Configuration via tooltypes dropped Now it I use a .prefs file in the current directory. - Internal changes (lots of work...) V1.4 BIG rewirte: - Only dynamically handled lists - Packer (ByteRun0) for configuration files (Don't like saving 000000000000...) - No more Enforcer hits (I hope so :-) ) - More than one menu supported - Easy to use configuration via GUI - 'Toggle Workbench' added TODO: - Patching the OpenWindow / OpenWindowTagList for local shanghais. It nearly works but it is not yet usable. What it does: Shanghais windows by name - Backgroud graphic... ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Support shareware!