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This is the section devoted to the very best of Directory Opus Magellan II.
Never mind about DOpus' extreme power handling files and filetypes, start menus
and buttons and all that other gubbins. This is the section you come to to
learn the really important stuff - how to make your Amiga look the best it can.
Magellan II offers some really neat new features and we'll trawl through those
in a second, but it's also had something of a revamp where existing features
are concerned. To start off with, we'll deal with its new, improved background
handling and how to get the most from a random set of backdrops...
Patterns shortcut:  4
Our first port of call is DOpus' environment editor. This is where you'll make
all the changes necessary in order to have your backdrops set up each time you
boot. DOpus will now allow you to have a random pattern rather than a simple
filename for your backdrops like so:
dopus5:patterns/
However good this is, is doesn't give you very much control over what gets put
where unless you want to create a separate drawer for each different background
type - Desktop, Window and Requester. The solution is twofold. Firstly, let's
say you only want repeating patterns for your windows and requesters - very
wise since they take a fraction of the time to load into memory compared to big
pictures, and they are also better suited to the small spaces available inside
windows. Instead of simply using an asterisk for your wildcard, let's use it a
little more carefully. Firstly, rename all your repeating patterns giving them
a defined name - something you can point at and instantly say, "That's a
repeating pattern, that is." On the machine we're using as an example, we use
the word "win" in our filenames to indicate it's a pattern suitable for
windows, but you can use whatever you like. Here's an example:
dopus5:patterns/*.win.*
This will match any file with ".win." contained in the filename, like so:
DopusStone.win.iff
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This will give you just the patterns you want for your DOpus
setup.
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The important thing about this is that we've now sorted out a way of only using
repeating patterns inside windows and requesters, by simply entering this
wildcard in the text gadgets for these two fields in the Environment editor. We
can leave the one for Desktop as it is, with just the wildcard so that we can
use pictures and repeating patterns for our Desktop, but there's a slight
problem with this. Basically, doing this assumes that you want to turn on
tiling for everything all the time. This also means that any picture you intend
for the desktop will have to be exactly the right size all the time, otherwise
it'll get tiled and look horrible!
Fortunately, there's a solution at hand. Magellan II allows the user to add a
special comment field for any picture intended for a backdrop of any sort.
Using it will mean that if you have a repeating pattern for your desktop it'll
still get tiled while a full picture will get centred and treated however else
you want it. Here's how it works.
The template for the comment field goes like this:
DOpus [tile|center|stretch] [precision ] [border off|]
And an image with the options set might look like this:
DOpus5:patterns/FF7PIC01.iff dopus center border 000000
The first bit (DOpus) is to tell DOpus that this comment field is something it
should look at before it shows the picture. The second bit
([tile|center|stretch]) means that you can choose one of these
keywords to place the picture as you like. The next bit ([precision ])
is the quality of the remapping for the image. You can choose between none, gui, icon, image
and exact and these are in ascending order of quality.
The last one ([border off|<colour>]) allows you to have the
image without any border (just being put on whatever background colour you have
set for the desktop), or with a predetermined colour border. This colour is set
by use of a hex number, which might sound confusing (I doubt it since you are
in the advanced section) but is easy enough to play around with. If in doubt,
here are some predefined common colours:
***Table with common hex colours!***
If you don't set one or any of these options the image will inherit whatever
options you have saved in your configuration. So, all you need do is find the
image you want to use as a backdrop and add a new comment to it for this to
work. By default there is a Comment tool in the lister toolbar, so select your
picture and click on that. If you have Inline editing turned on in the
Environment editor, you can also hold your left mouse button down over the
picture and you'll get a text cursor after a second or so. You can then tab
between the different fields for the picture (name, size, date, etc.) until you
get to the comment field and then type it directly in there. Remember to hit
return when you're done!
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Use the comment tool or just click and hold the left mouse
button to edit the comment field.
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Sounds shortcut: 4
DOpus now treats sounds in exactly the same way - well, sound events that is.
There's still no way it can easily replace the general system alert sound, so
you'll have to use a commodity like MagicSelector (get it from Triumph Software's
website). However, if you'd like a different sound every time you boot for
any of the items in the sound events list in the Environment editor, all you
need do is follow the same rules as for background patterns. Both sounds and
patterns can change if you change the settings for them in the Environment
editor, so you don't have to reboot to see the changes you have made.
Themes
Themes are a completely new addition to Directory Opus. Based on the idea
introduced in the Windows95 Plus Pack, the concept behind them is that you load
one file which alters a big chunk of settings in one go - sounds, backgrounds,
even fonts. You'll find numerous themes on this CD, all downloaded from the
net, all still in their original ZIP archives for legal reasons. You'll also
find a Convert Theme ARexx script which should render them useful for DOpus.
There's a new menu item in the Settings menu which allows you to load, save and
build a theme, and it's building which probably needs a little extra
explanation. When you create a theme on your own machine the files can reside
pretty much anywhere - sounds can be on one drive pictures on another, if you
so choose. It doesn't really matter because that's the way you like it.
However, in order to bundle a theme up and be able to give it to other users,
users who may not have a drive called "Zarniwoop" like you do, DOpus creates a
special theme directory which then has subdirectories which hold the files
you'll need for the theme. It then creates a file called blah.theme where blah
is the name you have chosen. This file is basically a big script file that
tells DOpus to replace the various settings with the ones you've saved. Neat
eh?
Dave Clarke has written a couple of ARexx scripts that you can use as you
Startup Event so that you can have a random theme every time you boot. Have a
look for them in the Tools directory of this CD.
Dave has also produced an HTML image-map
of all of the themes on the CD. You can use this system to see the desktop picture of each them -
click on the thumbnail images to see the full sized pictures. You can also click on the
label below the image to actually load the theme into Opus automatically.
| If you want to separate entries in menus (either Start, User or filetype pop-up menus), you can put a separator bar in by making a new entry with just "---" in it.
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