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Text File | 1994-09-23 | 17.3 KB | 336 lines

Conﬁgure+ version 1.00 © Sam Kington 24th September 1994 This program is freeware, *not* public domain – i.e., I retain copyright on Conﬁgure+ and all the related ﬁles (see “Boring legal message”). !Conﬁgure and the patched Conﬁgure ﬁles remain © Acorn Computers Ltd. and must not be copied. If you’re not going to read all of this ﬁle, at least read section “How to get this to work” – otherwise it won’t work (obvious really...). What this program does ********************** This program is an extension to !Conﬁgure: it allows you to set various conﬁgure options that !Conﬁgure omitted, while apparently still using !Conﬁgure. It adds four icons to Conﬁgure’s main window, “Drives”, “Filer”, “Misc” and “Third party”; clicking on any of these brings up a window, exactly like clicking on any of the other icons. The ﬁrst three new windows behave exactly like the others do, apart from the fact that they are in fact “owned” by Conﬁgure+ rather than Conﬁgure, and that the “Misc” window has a scroll bar because there’s so much in it. The “Third party” window is slightly different, as it contains all the *Conﬁgure options the program didn’t know about, and is thus slightly less nice (see below for more details). As this is an extension to Conﬁgure, operation should be self-explanatory: if you know how to use Conﬁgure, you should know how to use Conﬁgure+. If you want to know what all these new conﬁguration options are, use interactive help and everything will become clear (hopefully). Why do I need this? ******************* Because, when Acorn wrote Conﬁgure, they left a few things out. The Conﬁgure options in the extra window range from quite useful (ARM3 Cache) to frankly esoteric (Scroll or More dither patterns), and some can be set elsewhere (ﬁler and netﬁler options, Boot in the Desktop Save box from the Task Manager iconbar menu) – you won’t want to use them all the time, and indeed you probably won’t want to use them as much as you will the other options. But it’s a more friendly way of setting them, it avoids shelling out to the CLI (F12 or Ctrl-F12), especially as some cannot be set from the command line. Many of the options in the Misc window are either undocumented or tricky to set (i.e. there isn’t a *Conﬁgure option for them). This is the case of full hardware tests, solid drags, screen update stops blanker, 3D desktop and especially prompt for ﬂoppy on reset. This last one is in fact totally undocumented, and I am grateful to Christopher Swaley (BAU July 1993) for pointing this one out to me. (I had actually found it myself by accident, but I didn’t know where in CMOS RAM it was). (Conversely, some documented options don’t actually work, even though they’re in the PRMs...). Again, none of this is earth-shattering stuff, except solid drags, although if you have Desktop+ (and you should have) solid drags will be turned on automatically. Another reason for using Conﬁgure+ is that while Conﬁgure will save the entire contents of the CMOS RAM to a Conﬁgure ﬁle, it will only load back into CMOS RAM (from a Conﬁgure ﬁle), the options it knows about. This means it doesn’t load ADFSBuffers, Cache, third party conﬁguration options, etc. etc. Conﬁgure+ will notice when you load a new Conﬁgure ﬁle, and load all the options properly. This does mean, of course, that it will take quite a long time (1 or 2 seconds – accessing CMOS RAM is quite slow), but then you shouldn’t have to do this sort of thing too often. RISC OS 3.5 !Conﬁgure no longer loads Conﬁgure ﬁles - instead you have to use SaveCMOS. I couldn’t be bothered to change it, and anyway I think you *should* be able to load Conﬁgure ﬁles by dragging them to Conﬁgure, so for RISC PC users Conﬁgure+ adds even more functionality ;). A ﬁnal reason is that Conﬁgure+ knows about third-party modules’ conﬁguration options, or, to be more accurate, only pretends it does but does it quite convincingly. The “Third party” window contains a list of all the conﬁguration options provided by non-Acorn modules, either in expansion cards or in RAM, that you can set by ﬁlling in the appropriate results. There are no fancy arrows or menu boxes or anything because Conﬁgure+ doesn’t know about the new options, but you do get the *Help text and syntax messages if you use interactive help on the windows (*Help message for the name of the option, at the left of the window, syntax message for the value of the option, at the right of the window). NB: Conﬁgure+ only scans the list of modules for *conﬁgure options when it is ﬁrst started up, so if you load a module that has *conﬁgure options, you will have to quit Conﬁgure+ and re-run it to see them in the list. Conversely, if you quit a module that has *conﬁgure options and then try to set the option with Conﬁgure+, obviously Conﬁgure+ will complain. How to get this to work *********************** Conﬁgure+ adds new features to !Conﬁgure by adding four icons to Conﬁgure’s main window, which means it has to modify Conﬁgure’s Sprites, Templates and Messages ﬁles. However, Conﬁgure is © Acorn Computers Ltd., and the appropriate ﬁles, especially when modiﬁed, cannot be distributed like freeware. As every Acorn user has a copy of Conﬁgure, this isn’t too much of a problem: all you have to do is run a small “patch” utility. You should have a program called “ConfPatch” supplied with Conﬁg+ (if not, complain loudly to the person who supplied you with Conﬁg+). Running this, having “seen” Conﬁg+, will create the appropriate ﬁles, after asking you a few questions (see ConfPatch’s documentation for this). Before distributing Conﬁgure+, run the Obey ﬁle “Distribute” in the !ConfPatch directory (shift-double-click on the !ConfPatch icon to open it). This will delete the modiﬁed ﬁles. More about some new Conﬁgure options ************************************ Using interactive help should be enough to work out what the new Conﬁgure options are, but in some cases there is slightly more to say than will ﬁt in a help message. • More dithering in greyscale modes: In a two or four-colour mode, the WIMP will use dithering to make up for the lack of colours; however, by default it will only do this for colours 0 to 7, i.e. the grey scales. If you select this, it will use dithering for all the colours – but this will not happen everywhere. In practice, sprites in Filer windows, on the Pinboard, the icon bar or application windows will not be dithered, except for Sprite editors and the like, for which this option has no effect as they dither anyway. Draw ﬁles, Artworks ﬁles and similar objects will also be dithered whatever the state of the option. Essentially, dialogue boxes and similar windows will be dithered differently, as will menus. MemoryPie is a good example of the difference setting this option makes. The current dither state will actually change on a mode change. • Smarter scrolling This is a standard option, it even has its own *Conﬁgure option, and there *is* a difference, but it’s not at all noticeable. Replacing Conﬁgure ****************** To make the extension/replacement of Conﬁgure complete, there are two ﬁles in the !Conﬁg+.Conﬁgure directory, SetConﬁg and SetConﬁg+. Running SetConﬁg+ will change Conﬁgure’s icon to the Conﬁg+ icon (i.e. add a small red “+” sign to it), and change the !Boot, !Run and !Help ﬁles in !Conﬁgure in the Apps directory to point to the ﬁles in !Conﬁg+, the upshot being that Conﬁgure is replaced by Conﬁg+. Run SetConﬁg to reverse these changes. As the RISC OS 3.50 version of !Conﬁgure lives on the hard disc inside !Boot, and not in the Apps directory at all, SetConﬁg+ won’t work all that correctly - I assume it will put the appropriate icon in the Apps directory, but if you double-click on !Boot (the recommended way to run Conﬁgure, apparently) the old one will load. By default the !Conﬁg+.!Boot ﬁle runs SetConﬁg+; remove or comment out (preﬁx with a “|”) the offending line if you don’t want Conﬁg+ to replace Conﬁgure, or if you have a RISC PC. If you do want to make Conﬁg+ the default version of Conﬁgure, you might want to add a Filer_Boot Utilities:Extensions.!Conﬁg+ (replace by the real path) to your Boot ﬁle. The Conf+Resources module, the module that changes the ﬁles in the Apps directory, was created by Joseph Walker’s ResourceFS modiﬁer, ResMod (with a Help string tweaked to make it look prettier in the *Help Modules list). How it works ************ This is mainly for the techies out there, but non-initiates may ﬁnd it interesting. When you run Conﬁg+, or run Conﬁgure having run SetConﬁg+ previously, it does the following things: • Loads the module if it isn’t already loaded • Runs Conﬁgure+ (which just sits in the background and waits for mouse clicks) • Runs Conﬁgure Note that Conﬁgure+ and Conﬁgure have to be started up by separate ﬁles, as you can’t run two programs from the same Obey ﬁle, and Desktop ﬁles don’t set the WimpSlot properly. The module sets up a ﬁrst ﬁlter on all tasks, intercepting all messages. When it gets a Message_TaskInitialise from either Conﬁgure or Conﬁgure+, it remembers their task handles; when it has a sensible value for both, it knows that both tasks have started up, so it sets up another ﬁlter on Conﬁgure, intercepting all mouse clicks, as well as open and close window events – partly to know where the main window is, to align windows with the top, and also because the window handle of the main window changes every time it’s closed and re-opened. These are then passed along to Conﬁgure+. When either of the tasks quits, a Message_TaskCloseDown is received by the ﬁrst ﬁlter, so the module stops the ﬁlter on Conﬁgure. Conﬁgure+ is also checking for Message_TaskCloseDown, so if Conﬁgure is quit Conﬁgure+ will quit as well. In addition, the ﬁrst ﬁlter will also pass along DataLoad and DataOpen messages to Conﬁgure+, so that when you double-click on a Conﬁgure ﬁle or drag it to the Conﬁgure icon, Conﬁgure+ loads all of it into CMOS rather than just the options Conﬁgure knows about (which is what it usually does). This means all the conﬁguration options are loaded, including things like ADFSBuffers and any third-party options. So you don’t have to use FlDesk anymore ;). Note that when Conﬁgure+ gets a mouse click on one of Conﬁgure’s windows, it has to know whether the window is the main window (in which case it should check if one of its icons has been clicked on), or another window (in which case it should ignore the mouse click). It can’t check the window title, as the title is stored in Conﬁgure’s memory and therefore inaccessible, so it checks the number of icons in the window – which should be 16 in the Main window. So whatever you do, don’t change the number of icons in the Main window! Oh, a cautionary tale: I spent what must be several hours (it certainly felt like it) trying to get the ﬁlter to pass along DataLoad events to Conﬁgure+. Sometimes it worked if I passed it along twice (but it only got there once); once, when it was being sent along three times, it arrived ﬁve times (according to Vigil, which I suspect was responsible for some of the crashes). The times I had to reboot the machine because the Filter Manager got confused... (shudder) The problem was that I was intercepting messages in the Conﬁgure ﬁlter (the second one), which seems like a logical thing to do, except that the ﬁrst one was already intercepting messages for all tasks, including Conﬁgure, and obviously the Filter Manager gets a bit confused when two ﬁlters with the same name intercept the same events ;). So if you have more than one ﬁlter intercepting events from potentially the same tasks, make sure they’re not intercepting the same ones... Miscellanea *********** If you have loads of extra, non-Acorn, Conﬁgure options, the Third Party window will cunningly sprout a scroll-bar. I have been told of a problem with the Ether3 module (obscure stuff, eh?), which apparently uses the same command to set all of its oodles of conﬁguration options, which means you get a very long string in the Misc window that you can’t read. If it’s longer than 40 characters, it might crash the program. Boring legal message ******************** This application is freeware, that is, it can be distributed freely as long as only reasonable charges are made for media and distribution. I retain copyright on all program code and documentation. There is one exception to this, which is the modiﬁed Conﬁgure ﬁles in the !Config+.Configure directory – namely, Templates, Messages, Sprites, and, if present, Sprites22 and Sprites23. If you have just got the program, and haven’t run !ConfPatch, you shouldn’t have these ﬁles – if you do, someone has been breaking the law. These ﬁles remain © Acorn Computers Ltd., and so cannot be distributed along with the rest of the program – you must run !ConfPatch to create them from the original ﬁles. Before distributing Conﬁg+, run the ﬁle “Distribute” in the !ConfPatch directory to delete the modiﬁed ﬁles. See also the section “How to get this to work” for more details. This software is supplied “as is”: I make no warranty, expressed or implied, of the merchantability of this software or its ﬁtness for any particular purpose. In no circumstances shall I be liable for any damage, loss of proﬁts, or any indirect or consequential loss arising out of the use of this software or inability to use this software, even if I have been advised of the possibility of such loss. In other words, if your computer crashes, blows up, you lose all your work etc. all because of Conﬁgure+ (unlikely I know), don’t blame me. About all these strange foreign characters in this ﬁle ******************************************************* OK, so if you’re reading this on a PC or a Mac or another strange machine like that, you may be wondering what all these strange ae things are. Well, they’re quotes (sorry, there was another one), dashes, ligatures, etc. Honest. But not on all machines... Basically, character sets are only standard up to character 127, which is basically alphanumerics and a few standard punctuation marks. Foreign characters, typographical oddities like quotes and ligatures, and other more obscure symbols are “non-standard”, and each computer often has its own idea of where they should go in the character set. So don’t worry: even if it’s hard to read on your current machine, it won’t be on an Acorn machine. It may look slightly strange if you’re using the System font, however. But why am I using these strange characters in the ﬁrst place? Well, they’re in the character set and they look nice in an outine font, and I’ve written a program called Smart Quotes (sorry for the plug) that substitutes these sort of characters automatically, and I’ve got it turned on at the moment... Thanks ****** Thanks are due to the following people (not in any particular order): Dick Alstein for TemplEd (couldn’t live without it) Cy Booker for his wonderful BASIC cruncher (registration’s in the post) Simon Middleton at Uniqueway for help and feedback Rheingold for Vigil (I actually bought it) David Rushall for FlDesk (I don’t actually use it normally, but the compare CMOS option was useful) Kemal Sangrar for his invaluable TaskGuard utility – press Alt-Break and the current task is aborted. Makes you wonder what all this fuss over the RISC PC is all about ;). Dominic Symes for Zap (couldn’t live without it) Christopher Swaley for the ﬂoppy disc conﬁgure option Dave Walker at Acorn Customer Support for all the help Joseph Walker for ResMod Acorn get a ﬁrm and hearty thumbs up for the machine, RISC OS, the Filter Manager in particular and the quality of the PRMs (and at £100 I should think so ;) ), and a loud raspberry for not documenting all the CMOS options – bytes 215 to 223 aren’t even mentioned, let alone described as “reserved for Acorn use” when they actually do something quite sensible, like other bytes I could think of. In the RISC OS 2 PRMs they already got the CMOS slightly wrong, so Acorn, if you know what’s good for you – sack the guy who does the CMOS ;). Another thumbs up goes to Dave Walker at Customer Support for all the help, and another raspberry for those people who designed RISC OS 3.50 Conﬁgure, for not deleting the unused icons in the Templates ﬁle (look at the original Templates and count the number of icons shifted to one side...). How to contact me ***************** All bug-reports, suggestions, comments or indeed any feedback at all will be welcomed. Here’s how to get to me: E-mail : 9262861k@arts.gla.ac.uk, 926286ki@udcf.gla.ac.uk during term-time These should be OK until June 1996 At Christmas, Easter and during the summer, you can get me at wombat@altern.com, wombat@email.teaser.com or sam@altern.com, in order of preference (that is, if mail bounces off one of these or I don’t answer within a week send to the next one). Snail-mail : My term-time address, at least until June 1995, is: Sam Kington Flat 2/1 44 Hotspur Street Glasgow G20 8NL SCOTLAND Again, a backup is the home address – anything that goes here will get to me eventually. Sam Kington Merlhiot 24420 Savignac les Eglises FRANCE Term-time is October to June, with bits off at Christmas (3 weeks) and Easter (4 weeks).