Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_08/issue_07

Text File | 1995-03-10 | 5.6 KB | 109 lines

Hints and Tips
8.7
•  Desktop Font − If you find you are losing information on RISC OS 3.5
because your desktop font means that characters are truncated in icons
designed to take the System font, remember that you can select the
system font, until software producers catch up. Alternatively you can
edit the offending templates using FormEd, or similar. Peter Prewett,
South Australia.
8.7
•  “Gang screen” in RISC OS 3.5 − In RISC OS 3.10 there is a hidden
“gang screen”, showing the names of the people who worked on the
version; does anyone know if such a thing also exists in version 3.5? Or
can it be that the developers have, this time, only put that picture
into the “50-99” directory of !SlideShow images?  Jochen Konietzko,
Köln, Germany.
8.7
If you open the RISC OS 3.5 info window (press <menu> over the iconbar
acorn) and use the menu button to click out the word “team” on the
letters of “Acorn Computers”, it will initiate a list of names for you.
Matthew Hunter, NCS.
8.7
•  !KeyStroke’s KeysLib − If you use KeyStroke, you should take a close
look at the small Basic programs inside the KeysLib library − some of
them are very useful!
8.7
My personal favourites are forceAback and forceAfront which give you
quick access to parts of the Pinboard hidden by a window. ForceAback
puts all windows behind the Pinboard (you can see that they aren’t
simply closed if one of them extends down onto the iconbar) and
forceAfront reverses the process. To hide the windows, you define a
keystroke for a *Command:
8.7
Text: *Run <Keystroke$Lib>.forceAback
8.7
The equivalent text for forceAfront will make the windows reappear. Of
course, you must make sure that the filer has ‘seen’ KeysLib for this to
work.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln.
8.7
•  Long file names in RISC OS 3.5 − In Archive 8.6 p.68, Keith Hodge
made a little wish list for future versions of RISC OS; one of those
wishes was ‘long file names’. The manual for the German RISC OS 3.50D
does indeed state that a name must be between one and ten characters
long but this does not seem to be the whole truth. I have grown
accustomed to using the Cropping option in RISC OS 3.10, which meant
that I did not have to count if the intended name had exactly ten or
maybe more letters but on my Risc PC those slightly too long names are
not cropped!
8.7
As the picture shows, it is possible to type in up to 30 characters
before there is an error message “Name too long”. This seems to work
only in MemFS − surely there should be a way to implement it
everywhere?  Jochen Konietzko, Köln.
8.7
(This doesn’t seem to work on the UK version of RISC OS 3.5. Ed.)
8.7
•  Saving Wolfenstein games − Have you, too, noticed that sometimes,
when you save a game in Wolfenstein 3D, the name disappears, giving an
‘empty’ slot in the Save window?
8.7
If you have, you probably use CC’s !Compression. I have found that on my
RISC PC, as long as the !CFS.!Run file is open, the save option of
Wolfenstein 3D does not work properly (If you don’t know how to find out
which files are open, there’s a little PD utility called !FileMan which
lists all open files and allows you to close them one by one.)  Jochen
Konietzko, Köln.
8.7
•  Talking !Alarm − I have always wanted to have alarms which spoke to
me but I could not find a way to do this. When I dropped sound files
onto the Alarm Set window, all I got was a silent graph from Audioworks
or Soundlab. However, there is a way, thanks to an idea given to me by
David Pratt who used to run GemPD. I have used this on the Risc PC, but
I see no reason why it shouldn’t work on any other machine. There is
probably a clever ‘programmers type’ way to do this, but I am a simple
‘drag and drop’ person with no programming skills at all. You just need
two small Utilities obtainable from PD. They are !Compress and !Player
both by David Radford and obtainable from Datafile.
8.7
Using the Oak Recorder and !Soundlab, make Armadeus files of anything
you want Alarm to tell you. My first recording was of my wife saying
“It’s midnight − time to come to bed!” I also recorded snippets like
“Coffee time” and, I have to confess, “Time to watch Neighbours”.
8.7
Using !Compress, make compressed versions of these files. You must not
keep the uncompressed files in the computer or !Player seems to get
confused and an unholy row erupts!
8.7
Now load !Player into your Risc PC Bootfile in Choices.Boot.Tasks. When
you drop one of the compressed sound files into the Alarm Set window,
choose Task alarm and set the time and day, !Player in the boot file
activates the sound exactly on time.
8.7
“Are there any drawbacks?” I hear you cry. Well, I found that having
done their job, the compressed sound files seem to remain open, so that
when the computer boots up each morning it goes happily through each
recording again playing them until finished. But a small price to pay
for having a talking chum who tells you what to do each moment of the
day. No doubt there will be someone who can tell us how to stop this
little problem.  Christopher Jarman, Winchester.
8.7
•  Turbo Drivers and Printers 1.28 − the current versions of the Turbo
Drivers complain that they need a later version of !Printers when you
try to install them into the latest version of !Printers, currently
being shipped with new Risc PCs. This can be circumvented by copying the
install program to your hard disc, and editing the copy by removing line
91 of the !RunImage file (that is the 91st line of the program, not
Basic line 91). The Turbo Drivers should then install correctly. If you
do not wish to attempt this then get in contact with Computer Concepts.
CC Technical Support.  A