Alertia provides automated alert cancelation and keyboard activation of alert and dialog controls.
Requirements?
System 7.0 is the minimum needed. It has been tested on System 7 and 8. If you want it to run on some system and it doesn't, just let me know and I'll fix it.
Why the hell did you waste your time doing that? I have OkeyDokey Pro.
Alertia was first an "osax" (scripting addition). It remains scriptable, so you can turn on Alert Automation for a duration and then turn it back off. The scripting addition patches traps for each application it is activated for, whereas this control panel patches traps once at startup. In addition, the control panel is FAT, whereas the scripting addition is 68K only. (The CPU load of Alertia is minimal anyway). Alertia will also automate any "startup alerts", whereas activating the scripting addition would have to wait until a script was run from the "Startup Items" folder.
The code is the same. The scripting addition will notice if Alertia has been installed, and use it instead of its internal patching if this is the case.
What else?
You can configure various settings wihe control panel and/or the scripting addition. The control panel's settings remain active when you restart. Settings from the scripting addition are reset at the next restart with those from the control panel. The settings are stored in the control panel itself and thus copied with it.
Command click on any dialog to stop its timer, or turn caps-lock on to deactivate the whole shabang (e.g. with installers)
Since, as far as I know, System 7 did not support "unset" values for checkboxes, the default value of a setting for an application is indicated with a '≈' in front of its name. This indicates that the default value will be used when that application is active. The default value (on or off) is displayed when the title has a '≈' preceding it.
The "Log to File" goes into effect at the next restart and logs alert text to a file named "Alertia Log" on your boot volume if active.
What should I watch out for?
Some dialogs are not real dialogs - in the sense that they are handled internally by the application and not by the Dialog Manager the MacOS provides. These can not be handled by Alertia, since it slips in the Dialog Manager to do its thang.
Quite a few applications do not use the Dialog Manager's routines to set the default item. If you hit "enter" and the wrong button is selected, let me know which app it is and I will look into it.
Can I distribute it?
Yes. Alertia is free.
Who wrote it?
For questions, comments, or to let me know you hate Alertia and think it is worthless, contact:
Gregory Lemperle-Kerr
AKUA interactive media AG
akua@bluewin.ch
I'm a friendly person, so don't hesitate to request something or give your 2 cents or report a bug (there aren't any).
Why the silly title?
Alertia is a freak derivative of Alert and Intertia - indication that your Alerts will no longer stop your Mac from moving on. Ha ha.
History
V1.02
• Catch dialogs going away so we don’t quickly dismiss the next dialog that possibly uses the same location in memory.
• Fix operation on 68K Macs by inserting a FlushInstructionCache() into the code loader. This was a tough bug to find - I don’t like having to call code that low.
