This is the first final release of Virtual. You may distribute it freely, as long as you do not charge for it beyond the cost of the distribution medium or connexion time, and as long as you distribute this documentation with it. You must have my written authorization if you wish to include Virtual on a CD-Rom collection.
If you use it please pay the $10 Shareware fee.
What is Virtual?
If you're familiar with X-Windows workstations, you have probably used one virtual window manager or other. Virtual is one of those, for the Mac. It presents you with multiple 'virtual screens' where you can place your windows, so you don't have a clutter of them on your real screen. You can switch virtual screens with a key combination, or by choosing that screen in the Virtual window. You can drag windows around to move them to other screens, and so on.
Obviously, if you don't have enough memory to open more than one application at a time, you don't need Virtual (in that case, don't use Office 4.2 either :-)
Virtual is provided as-is. I am not liable for any damage it causes to your system. I will, however, offer limited assistance. I also welcome bug reports and wish-lists.
How do I install Virtual?
There are two things you should do:
• if you intend to use Virtual as a floating window, you should install the 'TSM Fix' extension. To do this, drag it to your system folder. This extension fixes a bug in the System that sometimes looses clicks on floating windows.
• if you used the beta version of Virtual that was previously available, please drag the old preferences file, called 'Virtual Prefs' from your 'Preferences' folder to the trash.
How do I use Virtual?
It's just an application, no extension, no trap patching, no messing up with your system. You just need to open Virtual. You'll see a floating window, divided in several parts (the virtual screens), that shows smaller versions of all your windows. One of the screens is in a darker shade of gray and has a small menu bar at the top; it's the active screen. One or several windows can be highlighted; they're the frontmost application's windows. Some windows can be drawn in green; they're sticky, which means they will move around with the active screen so as to always be on your monitor.
You can:
• click and drag the mini-windows to other virtual screens.
• shift-click and drag a mini-window around to move all the windows that belong to the same application.
• click on another virtual screen to make it the active screen.
• click on a mini-window to switch to the screen it's in and make the window active.
• click and hold on a mini-window to get some information about it…
• option-click on a window to make it stick. You cannot make a window with no name stick.
• option-shift-click on a window to make all the windows that belong to the same application stick. Use this for applications that don't name their windows.
• use the -F5 to -F12 combinations on your extended keyboard to go to the corresponding screen (F5 = screen 1, …, F12 = screen 6). Alternatively, you can use -arrow keys.
• use -escape to hide/show Virtual. Note: this also hides/shows other programs based on 'appe' Windows, such as HoverBar.
• -tab allows you to choose a window you want to jump to. Virtual will automatically change virtual screens and activate the application that created the window. You can use the arrow, page up, page down, home and end keys to select the window you want to jump to.
Preferences
The most important preference setting allows you to decide whether you want Virtual to float above all other windows, or not. In the case where you don't want it to float, you have the option to choose a 'hot corner': if you move the mouse to that corner, Virtual will come to the foreground.
You can change the number of virtual screens by setting the geometry parameters. The scale represents how much smaller Virtual is, compared to your screen size. If you choose 10, the mini-virtual screens will be 10 times smaller than your monitor (or monitors).
You can also change the colors that are used to draw mini-windows in the mini-screens, or decide not to use color at all (this feature was requested by people who were color impaired).
You can also have Virtual draw the icon of the owner application in the center of mini-windows. Since I find it nicer when the icons are dimmed, there is an option for that, too. Additionnaly, you may want to have virtual print the name of the application that created the window below the name of the mini-window.
Most of these changes can be previewed by clicking on the 'Apply' button.
Requirements and conflicts
Color QuickDraw, System 7.1 or later, 200kb of free memory.
Virtual goes to great lengths to change the way you use your windows. With most well written applications, this is not a problem, but some applications do not like it. In particular, there have been reports of odd behaviour with AppleMail.
Virtual also intercepts some events before the application you are working on sees them. This is the case for -arrow and -function key combinations. This can be annoying because some (most) word processors use them for cursor movement. These combinations will be customizable in the next version.
Lastly, since Virtual can put windows outside the visible screen, you should depend on Virtual to switch between processes. For example, if you try to use the application menu to switch to another application, you will go to that application, but not in the virtual screen where that application's windows are. This is true of any other process switcher you might use. In some cases, the conflicts can be even more dramatic; for example, Keyboard Cues crashes when you try to use it with Virtual installed.
To Do
• FAT version.
• Allow the user to customize the command key shortcuts.
• Nicer about box.
• Have a way to force applications to open their windows in a predefined virtual screen.
• Add support for Apple Events to remote-control Virtual. Is there any interest for this feature?
• More information in the popup information about a window (when you click and hold on a window). But what kind of stuff would be interesting?
• Any more ideas?
Shareware notice, etc.
Virtual is Shareware, which means that if you use it regularly, you should pay for it. I'm not charging much for it, because I had a lot of fun doing it, and because I believe few people would register if it was more expensive.
It is not crippled, which means that it operates exactly the same whether you register or not. It will remind you to register every week until you do, though :-)
It is copyrighted, which means you may not distribute modified copies of the application. You are encouraged to distribute unmodified copies as long as you distribute the present documentation with it.
To register, please send $US 10, or 50 French Francs, either in cash, or in a check draw on an American or French bank to the following address:
Pierre-Luc Paour
99, rue de la République
13980 Alleins
France
I will then send you a code to stop the weekly reminder.
Thanks to
Michael Hecht, for the interface to the Layer Manager used by Virtual.
Matt Slot, for his 'appe' Windows code, and Guillaume Lessard, for porting it to Code Warrior and making it PPC native.
Troy Gaul, for permission to use Infinity Windoid.
Dair Grant, for the ColourBlock CDEF.
Gauthier Houël and Arnaud "nono" Mouronval, for their beta-testing efforts and ideas.
