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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ClickDOS II V1.20 - by Gary Scott Yates Copyright (C) 1989 Gary S. Yates ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New or enhanced features in this version are marked with: V1.20 WHAT IS ClickDOS II: ClickDOS II is an AmigaDOS enhancement utility. It allows you to do DOS-like actions with the mouse instead of typing commands at a Command Line Interface (CLI). It adds a great deal of functionality for the "Click-n-Go" user which is not available in the Workbench environment. It also makes some of the tasks which are very cumbersome to do at a CLI or Workbench, such as moving or deleting a large number of files, much easier to perform. ClickDOS II is a dream for "cleaning up" floppy or hard drives or for browsing through disks of public domain software sorting out what you wish to keep. These are, however, only two of the many uses for ClickDOS II. DISTRIBUTION NOTICE: ClickDOS II IS NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN! However, it may be distributed freely provided: - the entire contents of the original distribution disk always accompany it - the program and all files on the original distribution disk remain unaltered in any way In addition: - No part of this disk may be included on a commercially distributed disk (including disk magazines) without written permission of the author: Gary S. Yates. - ClickDOS II and associated files MAY be distributed on any public domain compilation series disk in which a REASONABLE (no more than $10) distribution fee is charged. DONATIONS: If you find ClickDOS II useful, the author would appreciate a donation of $15. Your donation will place you on a mailing list to receive updates to ClickDOS II FREE! You will also receive notification of other useful programs as they become available. SEND DONATIONS TO: Gary Yates 1200 Happy Hollow Rd. Apt 507 West Lafayette, IN. 47906 INSTALLING ClickDOS II: ClickDOS II is easy to install. There are three files which ClickDOS II needs in order to operate correctly: - The file 'ClickDOS_II' can be located just about anywhere. However, it is best suited for the 'Utilities' directory on your Workbench disk. You can then start ClickDOS II from Workbench with icons or you can start it from your Startup-Sequence. If you wish to be able to start it from a CLI, however, you will need to add the Utilities directory to your path. See your AmigaDOS manual for information on the PATH command. - The file Spool needs to be in the directory which contains your DOS commands, usually the C directory of your Workbench disk where C: is assigned. - The file ClickDOS-StartUp must be in the directory to which you have S: assigned. Usually S: is assigned to the S directory on your Workbench disk. V1.20 In addition to these files, in order for the EDIT and RUN actions to operate reliably, you will need to use the NULL: device which is provided on the ClickDOS II distribution disk. To use the NULL: device: - The file 'null-handler' needs to be in the L directory of your Workbench disk. - An entry needs to be added to your MountList which looks like this: NULL: Handler = L:null-handler Stacksize = 500 Priority = 5 GlobVec = 1 # - The following line needs to be placed in your startup-sequence: mount NULL: You can copy these files by hand from the ClickDOS II distribution disk and do the setup yourself or you can use the INSTALL script provided. The INSTALL script will install ClickDOS II and the NULL: device as described above. To use the INSTALL script: If you are using AmigaDOS V1.3 you can run INSTALL from the Workbench (iconx must be in your path): 1. Make sure the distribution disk is in a disk drive. 2. Double-click on the ClickDOS II disk icon. 3. Double-click on the ClickDOS_II_INSTALL icon. If you are using any version of AmigaDOS other than V1.3 (i.e. 1.1 or 1.2): 1. If you do not already have one, start a CLI by clicking on the CLI icon. 2. Make sure the ClickDOS II distribution disk is in a disk drive. 3. Make the ClickDOS II distribution disk the current directory by using the CD command. For example if the ClickDOS II disk is in drive df0: type: CD DF0: 4. Type: execute Install The INSTALL script will install ClickDOS II for you. It will copy the files to your Workbench disk as described above and append lines to your MountList and to your startup-sequence. If you do not have a MountList or startup-sequence INSTALL will create one. Regardless of which method of executing INSTALL you use, when INSTALL is complete, you will probably need to edit your startup-sequence and move the lines which INSTALL adds to a better position than at the end of the file. You do NOT have to edit your MountList unless you keep your MountList entries in a specific order for some reason. You do NOT have to re-boot after running INSTALL as it will start the NULL: device for you so that you can begin using ClickDOS II immediately. USING ClickDOS II: ClickDOS II can be started from either WorkBench or a CLI. From a CLI type: clickdos_ii [dir1] [dir2] [-i] where dir1 and dir2 are directories you want ClickDOS II to put into its directory areas as soon as it starts. These are optional and are simply a convenience. The -i option will be explained in the section on iconification. Form WorkBench simply double click on the ClickDOS_II icon. THE ClickDOS II WINDOW: Included on the ClickDOS II distribution disk is an IFF picture file called ClickDOS.pic. This picture is a diagram of the ClickDOS II window, with labels pointing out the different areas and gadgets. You may find it quite helpful to view this picture to get somewhat familiar with the parts of the ClickDOS II window before continuing with this section. Users of ClickDOS V2.06 will find that the ClickDOS II window is significantly different from the original. You may also find it helpful if you start ClickDOS II now and experiment with each feature as it is described here. The main features of the ClickDOS II window are the two directory areas. These areas are where ClickDOS II shows you the files in the currently selected directories and where you pick the files you want to affect with the action gadgets. You can scroll the file names in a directory area using the proportional gadget to the right of each area. At the top of the window is a space where ClickDOS II will present messages to you. WATCH THIS AREA! In the upper right hand corner of the window ClickDOS II will continuously show you how much memory is available in your system. It displays CHIP and FAST memory separately in Kilobytes (K). This display is updated about every second. DIRECTORY AREA DISPLAY MODES: The directory areas of ClickDOS II can show you more than just the names of files. They can also show you file sizes, creation dates, protection bits, etc. What information the directory areas display depends on the display mode the directory areas are in. The display modes are: S - display file size in bytes D - display file creation date T - display file creation time P - display protection bits C - show if a file has a comment N - show nothing but the file names V1.20 B - display file size in blocks You can change the display mode of a directory area by clicking on the display mode gadgets in the center of the ClickDOS II window. There is a set of display mode gadgets for each directory area. The letter of the current display mode is highlighted. READING DIRECTORIES: There are several ways you can get ClickDOS II to read a directory into one of its directory areas. And still more ways to manipulate the directory once it has been read. The most common way to enter a directory is to simply click on one of the device gadgets above each directory area. This will cause ClickDOS II to read the root directory of that device. There is a set of eight device gadgets for each directory area. The devices represented in these gadgets can be set in the ClickDOS-Startup file explained later. When ClickDOS II reads a directory, it sorts the contents of the directory alphabetically, files separate from directories. It places all directory names at the top of the list followed by file names. Directory names are shown in the Workbench Screen's highlight color (orange in the default Workbench colors) and file names in the text color (white in the default Workbench colors). The colors ClickDOS II uses on your system will depend on your current preferences settings. You can also cause ClickDOS II to read a directory by typing the FULL PATH of a directory name into the Current Directory Gadget located over each directory area. ClickDOS II will always show the name of the current directory in this gadget. V1.20 You can force ClickDOS II to re-read a directory from disk by clicking on the Re-Read gadget. You may want to do this, for example, if you do something at a CLI which changes the contents of the directory. ClickDOS II cannot detect such a thing and you would have to force it to re-read the directory to see the changes. ClickDOS II does support AmigaDOS logical device names such as C:. Typing C: into the Current Directory Gadget will cause ClickDOS II to read the directory ASSIGNed to C:. File Comments are a very nice feature of AmigaDOS. Unfortunately because they are so clumsy to set or view with the CLI or Workbench, few people use them. ClickDOS II makes file comments easy to set or view. To make you aware that file comments are present, when ClickDOS II reads a directory, if any of the files have comments, ClickDOS II will put the following in the message display: File(s) read have comments. MANIPULATING DIRECTORIES: Once ClickDOS II has read the contents of a directory, you can read subdirectories of that directory by clicking on the name of a subdirectory and either clicking on the Child gadget or clicking the RIGHT mouse button (the menu button) over the directory name. Note, this has been changed since version 2.06 which allowed you to click the right button anywhere over the directory area once you had selected the name. You must now click ON the directory name with the right button. The Double-Click was not used to read subdirectories because of the conflict with clicking on a directory name a second time to deselect it. You can very quickly read a subdirectory of one directory area into the OPPOSITE directory area by clicking and holding on the directory name then dragging the mouse to the other directory area and releasing the button. You can move from a subdirectory back to its parent by clicking the Parent gadget. If you click the parent gadget when at the root of a device, ClickDOS II will completely clear the directory area and free all memory it was using to store the filenames. You can cause ClickDOS II to free all memory used by a directory area very quickly by clicking the RIGHT mouse button over the Parent Gadget. You may want to do this for both directory areas to free up as much memory as possible if you are going to put ClickDOS II in the background (iconification is explained below) and use another program. There are three gadgets located between the directory areas called the Swap Gadgets. These gadgets allow you to do swapping of the contents of the directory areas. The single arrow Swap Gadgets [<] and [>] cause ClickDOS II to read the same directory into both directory areas. For example if you have read a directory into the Left area you can quickly have ClickDOS read the same directory into the right area by clicking the Right Swap Gadget [>]. The double Swap Gadget [<>] causes the two directory areas to switch contents. What was in the right area will be read into the Left and vice-versa. Note that using the swap gadgets deselects selected filenames. Above each directory area is an Amount Selected/Free Space display. ClickDOS II will always display here the free space available on the disk on which the directory in the directory area resides. The disk free space will be displayed as F:XXXXXXXXX where XXXXXXXXX is the free space. This display is V1.20 affected by the S and B display modes. The free space will always be displayed in the most recently selected of these two display modes (display modes other than S and B do not affect this display.) If S has been selected the free space will be displayed in bytes. If B has been selected the free space will be displayed in blocks. SELECTING FILES: To select files to be affected by the action gadgets you simply click on filenames in a directory area. You can click on a filename again to deselect that file, or click on the Unselect All gadget to deselect all of the files in a directory area. There is an Unselect All gadget for each directory area. You can select a group of filenames by clicking and holding the left mouse button then dragging the pointer over several names. Then, when you release the button, all of the names you dragged over will be selected (or deselected, if previously selected). With the current version of ClickDOS II the directory area will NOT scroll if you drag past the last visible name. Therefore, the most you can select in this way is the visible area of names (15 in non-interlace or 40 in interlace mode), but it is still better than click, click, click, click.... As you select files, ClickDOS II keeps a running total of bytes or blocks selected for each directory area. This value is always displayed in the Amount Selected/Free Space display above each directory area. It is displayed as S:XXXXXXXXX where V1.20 XXXXXXXXX is the number of bytes or blocks selected depending on the most recently selected of the two display modes: S or B (other display modes have no affect on this display). The Amount Selected display is very handy for determining if all the files you selected will fit on the disk to which you are copying them. Note that the blocks display mode is better for determining if you have enough free space because it takes into account the blocks for directory and file headers as well as file size. The Bytes display does not account for this space and thus gives Amount Selected values which are too low. Unfortunately, AmigaDOS has no way of determining how large an entire directory of files is short of reading the entire directory, which, as everyone knows, is SLOW! Therefore, the contents of selected directories are not automatically included in the Amount Selected value. You can, however, have ClickDOS scan all selected directories and add up all the space they occupy by clicking on the Amount Selected/Free Space Gadget. The total bytes or blocks occupied by everything you have selected in the directory area whose AS/FS Gadget you clicked will be momentarily displayed in the message bar. The Amount Selected display will NOT change to include the size of selected directories' contents. It will still only display total selected file size (plus 1 block for each selected directory if the Block display mode is active). After ClickDOS II has completed an action you requested with any action gadget, it will automatically deselect all files in BOTH directory areas. If you wish to do a second action on these same files, you can click the Select All gadget and it will reselect them for you PROVIDED the previous action did not cause ClickDOS II to re-read the directory in that area. Clicking on the Select All gadget twice will select ALL of the files in the appropriate directory area. IMPORTANT NOTE: You will not be able to see selected files which have scrolled out of the directory area. BEWARE OF THIS! It is easy to forget about these files and inadvertently affect them with an action. ClickDOS II helps out with this by deselecting all files after each action is complete. SOURCE AND DESTINATION DIRECTORY AREAS Actions such as COPY and MOVE require both a source directory and a destination directory to be specified. ClickDOS II makes determining which directory area is the source and which is the destination very simple - if you select a file or subdirectory in a directory area, that area automatically becomes the source and the opposite directory area becomes the destination. Therefore, to copy a file from one directory to another, you simply bring up the directory which contains the file in one directory area and the directory where you wish to copy the file in the other area. Which area is which is not important because you tell ClickDOS II which is the source by selecting the file. To copy a file to the same directory but with a different name, you would have ClickDOS II bring up the same directory in both areas. This is easy with the Swap Gadgets. One of the unique things about ClickDOS II is that you can select files in both areas at the same time and ClickDOS II will know which is the source and which is the destination for each file. You could, for example, pull up two directories, select files in both, then select MOVE and ClickDOS II would swap the files between the directories. ClickDOS II always processes files from top to bottom, in the Left directory area first then the Right. It does NOT process them in the order they were selected as some directory utilities do. WHAT ClickDOS II CAN DO FOR YOU: This section describes ClickDOS II's built-in action gadgets. MAKEDIR - This is used to create a new subdirectory in one of the directory areas. When you click on this gadget ClickDOS II will present a requester asking you for the name of the new directory. You must type in the name of the new directory and then select one of the three other gadgets in the requester. Click on the LEFT gadget if you want ClickDOS II to create the new directory in the left directory area. Click on the RIGHT gadget if you want ClickDOS II to create the directory in the right directory area. Click on the CANCEL gadget if you have changed your mind. RENAME - Rename will let you change the name of one or more files. To use this option, select the files to rename then click on this gadget. ClickDOS II will ask you for a new name for each of the files you selected. At each requester, type in a new name or select CANCEL if you want to stop the rename process. NOTE: Selecting CANCEL will only stop the rename process, it will NOT undo the files that were already renamed. To make renaming easier, ClickDOS II will fill the requester gadget with the old name of the file. This allows you to edit the old name making renaming quicker. If you are completely changing the name, a quick Right Amiga-X will zap the old name out of the requester. Rename will NOT let you rename across directories on the same disk as AmigaDOS will let you do. You must use the MOVE action to do this. COPY- Copy duplicates all selected files. The duplicate is either placed in another directory and is given the same name as the source file, or it is placed in the same directory and given a different name. Where the duplicate is placed depends on the destination directory area. To copy files, bring up the directory you wish to copy files FROM in one directory area and the directory you wish to copy files TO in the other directory area (which directory area is which, is not important.) Select the files you wish to copy and click the COPY gadget. If you wish to copy files to the same directory but with different names, bring up the same directory in both areas, select the files you wish to copy in one of the areas and click COPY. ClickDOS II will know that you are copying files to the same directory and will ask you for a new name for the new copy of each file. A very powerful feature of the copy option is that it can copy an entire directory! If you click on a directory name and then click COPY, ClickDOS II will create this directory in the destination directory and then copy every file AND SUBDIRECTORY and every file in every nested subdirectory in the source directory to the destination (phew!). For example, you could copy an entire directory of fonts by simply clicking on the directory and then clicking COPY! Try it, I think you'll like it! NOTE: If an error occurs while ClickDOS II is copying a file, ClickDOS II WILL remove the damaged destination file. However, if you are copying an entire directory, the files which had already been copied before the error occurred will NOT be removed from the destination. Only the single damaged file will be removed. An error causes the COPY action to halt. It will not copy the remaining selected files after an error has occured. You will need to look at the destination disk and see which files made it and which ones didn't. The MOVE action and the DELETE action also behave in this manner. THE CLONE FEATURE: Normally when AmigaDOS copies a file, the protection bits, comment and creation date are not copied along with the file. With the 1.3 release of AmigaDOS a new option was added to the COPY command called CLONE which would copy this supplementary data as well. ClickDOS II also supports the CLONE option with its copies. In the center of the ClickDOS II window is a gadget called CLONE. You can click on this gadget to toggle the CLONE option on and off. The CLONE option is on when the word CLONE is surrounded by a highlight box. You can set whether the CLONE option defaults to on or off by using the CLONE command in the ClickDOS-Startup file discussed below. MOVE- The Move option works almost identically to Copy with one important difference - Move DELETES the SOURCE files or directory when it is finished copying them. While Copy does not. When Move is used to transfer files from one directory to another on the same disk it does so by renaming the files rather than actually making new copies. This is faster and a more efficient use of disk space. DELETE- Delete will permanently erase every file you have selected. Watch for those files which have scrolled out of the visible area which you forgot you selected!! Delete will also delete an ENTIRE directory and every single thing in it!! BE WARNED! This is a very powerful but potentially VERY DANGEROUS feature. You should be sure you truly want to delete EVERYTHING in the directory you selected!!!! By default ClickDOS II will NOT ask for confirmation before deleting an entire directory. However, you can turn this feature on in the ClickDOS-Startup file (see the CNFRM option below.) Note however that even if confirmation is ON ClickDOS II will ask you to confirm directory deletions only ONCE each time you select DELETE. That is, if you have ten directories selected ClickDOS II will not ask you to confirm the deletion of each directory, only the first one. This is to make deletions of multiple directories quicker but means you still need to be a little careful. NEWCLI- This gadget will bring up a NewCLI (or NewShell) window for you to use. This is a true CLI window and will hang around until you give the EndCLI command. The SHELL option in the ClickDOS- Startup file lets you tell ClickDOS what command to use to start the CLI. (NewCLI, NewSHELL, AShell, etc.) SHOW- This option will show any IFF ILBM picture or brush. To show a picture select the picture's file name and then click the SHOW gadget. Show will display the picture for about 5 sec then return to the ClickDOS II window. You can do a slide show type viewing by selecting several pictures. They will be shown one at a time. Between each picture you will see ClickDOS II flip back to its window. This occurs for two reasons: one, so ClickDOS II can tell you the name of the next picture; two, this way only one screen has to be allocated in memory at any given time so show is more memory efficient. Please keep in mind this option was intended to give you a way to review your files for deletion, copying, etc. and not as a true presentation program. It is useful but has no frills. If you wish to view a picture for longer than 5 sec, press the ESC key while the picture is on the screen. This will turn off the timing. Then, when you are finished viewing the picture, press ESC or the left Mouse Button to go to the next picture. Timing is turned back on for each picture. To jump to the next picture before the 5 sec has elapsed press the LEFT Mouse Button. To jump out of the slide show completely (i.e. return to ClickDOS II) press Q (for Quit). If color cycling is defined in the IFF file, you can turn on color cycling by pressing the TAB key. Note that many pictures may have color cycling defined in the IFF file even though the picture was not entended to be color cycled. For example, Deluxe Paint puts color cycles into ever picture regardless of whether the artist used color cycling or not. For such pictures, turning on color cycling can have interesting but unusal results. Because of such problems ClickDOS II does NOT automatically turn on color cycling; you must do it with TAB. To turn off color cycling press TAB a second time and ClickDOS II will restore the colors to their original state. ClickDOS II turns OFF color cycling as it loads each picture. As mentioned above Show can display brushes. It can also display overly large bitmaps BUT only as much of the upper left corner as will fit on the screen. Show supports both HAM (Hold And Modify) and Extra Half Bright modes. Show is, however, a very simply IFF reader. It will NOT find ILBM hunks which are inside of other hunks, for example, ANIM hunks. V1.20 In addition to using built-in commands to display pictures and brushes, if SHOW detects that the file is an ANIM IFF file it will execute and ANIM display program automatically to show the animation. You specify which ANIM display program to use with the ANIMV command in the ClickDOS-Startup file. See also the section: ICONIFYING ClickDOS II TYPE - This option lets you view any text or binary file in ASCII format. It does no formatting of its own (i.e. no word wrap) I did not implement this because so many README and DOC files (the most common use of type) are pre-formatted. ClickDOS II trying to reformat these already formatted files just makes a mess! Type will show you several files one after the other if you select multiple files. Type opens a separate borderless window to show you the file. You can use the following commands to scroll through the text: SPACE or Left Mouse Button - scrolls forward through the text by one full screen RETURN - scrolls forward by one line Right Mouse Button - scrolls backward by one full screen. Same as B command below. In addition to these commands the title bar of the TYPE window displays other commands available while typing a file. These commands are: b or B - scrolls Backward by what ClickDOS II can "best guess" is one screen. ClickDOS II does not actually take the time to scan backwards in the file and figure out how to back up exactly one screen full of text. Instead, it simply guesses how far back to go based on the number of characters on the current screen. ClickDOS II will tell you how many characters it went backward in the file. g or G - allows you to jump directly to a certain percentage of the file. You will be presented with a requester asking for the percentage of the file you wish to jump to. For example, if you want to jump to the end of the file enter 100 for 100 percent. If you wish to jump to the middle of the file enter 50 for 50 percent, etc. ClickDOS II does not support jumping to a specific line number. t or T - takes you to the top of the file. e or E - takes you to the end of the file. V1.20 m or M - (Modify) starts the editor which you have specified in the ClickDOS-startup file passing it the name of the file currently being typed. If your editor requires a standard I/O window (EDSTD=Y in ClickDOS-startup file) then ClickDOS II will go to sleep until your finish editting the file. When you exit the editor ClickDOS II will continue with the TYPE action by displaying the next selected file (if there is one). If your editor is run in background mode (EDSTD=N) then ClickDOS II will continue immediately with the TYPE action and display the next selected file (if there is one). When you exit your editor the file in the TYPE window will not be the file you just editted. s and S - perform simple NON-CASE sensitive searches. When you do a search ClickDOS II will present you with a requester into which you type the string of characters you wish to search for. The search begins at your current location in the file NOT at the top. If you wish to search the entire file, you need to press t or T, first, to go to the top. Little s and capital S do not behave exactly the same. Capital S will always force ClickDOS II to give you a search requester so that you can enter a search string. Little s, on the other hand, will only present a requester if you have not done a search previously (i.e. the search buffer is empty.) Therefore, you can use capital S to do new searches and little s to repeat the last search (i.e. search for the next occurance of the string.) ClickDOS II allows you to search for non-printable characters by entering a LOWER-CASE letter preceeded by a backslash (\). Currently the following non-printable characters are supported: New Line(line feed) - \n Carriage Return - \r Bell - \g Form Feed - \f Tab - \t Because the backslash is used to flag these special characters, in order to search for a backslash you must type two backslashes (\\), to search for two backslashes you type four (\\\\), etc. ESC - end viewing the currently displayed file and jump to the next selected file. If the current file is the last file selected, then ESC has the same effect as Q Q - end viewing files and return to the ClickDOS II window ignoring the remaining selected files. Also see the section: ICONIFYING ClickDOS II. PRINT - This option allows you to send ASCII files directly to your printer (if you have one). You can select several files then click on PRINT and ClickDOS II will spool all of the files to the printer. To do its print spooling ClickDOS II uses a supplementary program called Spool. See Appendix A for more information on Spool. RUN - V1.20 The RUN option allows you to execute a program or script file from within ClickDOS II. There are two ways you can use run: one, you can select a program name in the directory area and then click on RUN to execute that program or script; two, you can simply click on RUN and ClickDOS II will open a requester asking you for the name of the program or script to execute. In either case ClickDOS II will present you with a requester asking for optional arguments to pass to the program or script. Any arguments you type will be passed to the program or script just as if you had typed them after the name of the program or script at a CLI. Just like the AmigaDOS shell, ClickDOS II determines whether your are attempting to start a program or script by looking at the script flag of the file. If the script flag is set ClickDOS assumes the file is a script. Otherwise, it assumes the file is a program. If ClickDOS II determines that the file is a program, (i.e. the script flag NOT set) then the argument requester will contain three gadgets. Regardless of whether you type in any arguments, you must click on one of these gadgets before ClickDOS II will execute the program. These gadgets are: STD IO - This stands for Standard Input/Output. If you click on this gadget ClickDOS II will open a normal console window, much like a CLI window, for the program to use for its output. CANCEL - Click this to cancel running the program or script. NO CLI - This starts the program as a background process just as if you had typed: RUN <NULL: >NULL: program <arguments> from a CLI. If ClickDOS II determines that you are attempting to execute a script file, only one gadget, CANCEL, will appear in the requester. Regardless of whether you type in any arguments, pressing return will cause ClickDOS II to open a standard output window and execute the script. ClickDOS II will not execute scripts as background processes. Clicking CANCEL without pressing enter will cancel executing the script. A WARNING ABOUT RUN: AmigaDOS has very POOR support for having one program (such as ClickDOS II) start another program. Because of this, when you start a program with RUN, you will not be able to give any input to that program if it uses StdIn even if you use the STD IO option. Trying to RUN a program which uses StdIn can have one of two effects; one, it will hang the program and ClickDOS II; two, the program will detect that there is no StdIn and report and error or continue with some default value. Use of the NULL: device rather than the NIL: device provided by AmigaDOS causes more programs to behave in the second manner, which is the perferred behavior. I know this may not make any sense to some people so here are some basic rules to follow when using RUN to execute programs: 1. None of the AmigaDOS commands require StdIn except Ask, Diskcopy and Format. These three programs detect that there is no StdIn and assume default values as their input. Ask assumes No was entered while Diskcopy and Format simply don't ask. They start working without waiting for you to press RETURN! WARNING!!! this means that Diskcopy and Format will start without waiting for you to put in the correct disks! You can very easily format or copy over the wrong disk if you use these commands with RUN. You have been warned!!! All of the other AmigaDOS commands should work with RUN provided you don't use the ? option. (See your AmigaDOS manual for an explaination of ?.) 2. Do not RUN a program unless you have started it before, from a CLI or from Workbench, and you know how it behaves. 3. If a program opens its own window and does everything from that window, then it is probably safe to use with RUN. 4. If a program only does output to a CLI window but not input (i.e. it never asks you to type in anything) then it is probably safe to use with RUN. 5. If you know a program does input from a CLI, such as DISKCOPY (it asks you to press RETURN to start the copy) then it is probably NOT safe to use with RUN! Test the program carefully. 6. If a program will run from Workbench by double clicking its icon then it may be safe to use with RUN. Do some testing. I hope that Commodore will enhance the ability of AmigaDOS to handle child processes in the 1.4 release. PROTECT - The PROTECT action lets you change the protection flags of files and directories. ClickDOS II supports the new AmigaDOS 1.3 protection flags (s)cript, (a)rchive and (p)ure. To change the protection status of an object, select the files or directories whose protection flags you wish to change then select the PROTECT gadget. A requester will appear showing you the protection flags of the first file. ClickDOS II will show you, in the message bar, the name of the file for which you are changing the protection flags. In the requester are eight gadgets, one for each of the currently supported protection flags. The gadgets correspond to the protection flags as follows from left to right: (H)idden (S)cript (P)ure (A)rchive (R)eadable (W)ritable (E)exeutable (D)eletable V1.20 Note, with release 1.3.2 of AmigaDOS the PROTECT command will set and clear the (H)idden flag. However, AmigaDOS seems to ignor it at this time. ClickDOS II will also set and clear this bit, but also ignors it. See your AmigaDOS manual for the meaning of the other protection bits. The text in each gadget tells you if the protection flag is on or off. If the gadget contains the first letter of the name of the protection flag, then the flag is on. If the gadget contains a dash (-) then the flag is off. To change a protection flag for the indicated file, click on the gadget which corresponds to the flag you wish to change. This will toggle the protection flag on if it was off and vice- versa. Once you have the protection flags set the way you want for the indicated file, you must then select one of the other three gadgets in the requester to continue: OK - If you want to use these protection flags for the file indicated in the message bar then select this gadget. ClickDOS II will set the flags for the file, then present another requester for the next selected file. ALL - If you want to use these protection flags for all of the remaining selected files, then click ALL. ClickDOS II will set the protection flags in the current requester for all of the remaining selected files. CANCEL - If you changed your mind then select CANCEL. Note that if you had already selected OK and set the protection flags on several previous files ClickDOS II will NOT cancel the changes to those files. It will only cancel the current requester and end the PROTECT process for the remaining selected files. COMMENT - Use this action to set an AmigaDOS comment for a file or directory. To add or change the comment of an object, select the files or directories whose comment you wish to add/change then select the COMMENT gadget. A text requester will appear showing you the current comment, if any. ClickDOS II will show you, in the message bar, the name of the file for which you are editing a comment. Use the text gadget to add a new comment or edit the existing one. When you have finished editing the comment, you must then select one of the other three gadgets in the requester. These three gadgets are identical to the gadgets in the PROTECT requester: OK - this accepts the comment for the current file, then gives you a new requester for the next selected file. ALL - this accepts the comment in the current requester and sets if for all of the remaining selected files. CANCEL - cancels the COMMENT action. EDIT - This action allows you to edit files directly from within ClickDOS II. The EDIT action starts the editor which you have specified in the ClickDOS-Startup file. ClickDOS II passes this editor the name of the first file you have selected in a directory area (remember ClickDOS II searches from top to bottom the left directory area and then the right). If no files are V1.20 selected then you will be presented with a requester asking you for the name of the file to edit. Note that you can only select one file to edit. Multiple file selection is not supported by EDIT. (See THE ClickDOS-Startup FILE below.) There are six other action gadgets in the ClickDOS II window which are blank. These gadgets are reserved for future expansion. ICONIFYING ClickDOS: You will notice (perhaps with some reservation) that the ClickDOS II window does not have a size gadget. This is true, you cannot size the window. There is however an ICONIFY system gadget in the title bar of the window, beside the front back gadget. This gadget, when clicked, will shrink the ClickDOS II window down to a tiny size and place it in the title bar of the Workbench screen. Clicking on this gadget again will return the window to its normal size. This is called iconifying. When its window is iconified ClickDOS II uses much less chip memory and is out of the way. ClickDOS II takes up about 60K of FAST memory and 1K of CHIP memory when it is iconified and you have expansion memory. ClickDOS II also "goes to sleep" when it is iconified so it takes a minimum of CPU time. It is very handy to leave ClickDOS II iconified and available all the time on your Workbench. If you would like to start ClickDOS II in its iconified state, you can place the -i option in its argument list when you start it from a CLI. This is useful if you would like to start ClickDOS II from your StartUp-Sequence. If you do not like the iconified window where ClickDOS II places it, you can drag it to a new location and from then until you end ClickDOS II the iconified window will be placed there. Also, you can specify absolute screen coordinates in the ClickDOS-Startup file and these will become the default location of the iconified window. The iconified window continuously shows the current free chip and fast memory. You can also iconify ClickDOS II while the Type or Show windows are displayed. However, while either of these windows is displayed the iconify gadget is disabled. To iconify ClickDOS II while the Type window is displayed, click the RIGHT Mouse button in the title bar of the Type window. The Type window will close and the ClickDOS II window will shrink. Click the iconify gadget to un-iconify ClickDOS II. The Type window will re-open. To iconify ClickDOS II while the Show window is displayed simply click the RIGHT mouse button. The Show window (actually a separate screen) will be pushed to the background, and the ClickDOS II window will shrink. To un-iconify ClickDOS II click on the iconify gadget. The ClickDOS II window will un-iconify, and the Show window will come back to the front. While ClickDOS II is iconified with the Show window open, the normal Show timer is turned off. Timing will begin again when ClickDOS II is un-iconified. Also note that if you iconify ClickDOS II while showing a picture the Show window remains open and is thus comsuming a large amount of memory! THE ClickDOS-Startup FILE When ClickDOS II executes it will try to read a file called ClickDOS-Startup in the directory where S: is currently assigned. Please note that this has changed from ClickDOS V2.06 which read a file called .DOSRC in the T directory. The formats of the .DOSRC file and the ClickDOS-StartUp file are quite different. The ClickDOS-Startup file is an ASCII text file which contains commands telling ClickDOS II how to configure itself. Each line of the ClickDOS-Startup file has the following format: command=value; All of the startup file commands are five letters long and must be in all capital letters. Each command must be followed by an equals sign and then an appropriate value for that command. There can be no spaces around the equals sign. Each line must end with a semi-colon (;). You may place a comment on the same line after the semi-colon if you wish. I made ClickDOS II very strict with its format of the startup file to keep the size of the initialization code very small. The initialization code of a program gets executed once when the program starts and then is just "dead weight" for the remainder of the time the program is in memory. Keeping the size of ClickDOS II small makes it more useful to more people, namely those with limited memory. Here are the commands you can specify in the ClickDOS-Startup file to tailor ClickDOS II to your needs and tastes: VOLMS - This command allows you to set the device names which you want to appear in ClickDOS II's device gadgets. It must be followed by a string of 32 characters which define the devices, for example: VOLMS=RAM:RAD:DF0:DF1:DF2:C: DH0:DH1:; No device name may be over four characters. If a device name is less than four characters, then it must be padded on the RIGHT with spaces (see C: above). IXPOS - This option lets you specifiy the default X coordinate location of ClickDOS II's iconified window. It must be followed by a number for the location of the left hand edge of the window, for example: IXPOS=120; This would put the left edge of ClickDOS II's iconified window at the 120th pixel on the workbench screen. Legal values for IXPOS are 0 to 200. IYPOS - This option allows you to set the default Y coordinate location of ClickDOS II's iconified window. It must be followed by a number for the location of the top edge of the window, for example: IYPOS=0; This would put the top edge of ClickDOS II's iconified window at the very top of the Workbench screen. Legal values for IYPOS are 0 to 190 for a non-interlace Workbench screen, and 0 to 390 for an interlace Workbench screen. NOTE: If you are going to specify an IYPOS value higher than 190 then the command ILACE=Y; must be before the IYPOS command in the startup file. SPOOL - This command allows you to tell ClickDOS II where it can find the spool program. The default location is (C:SPOOL). It also allows you to tell ClickDOS II that you have renamed the spool program to some other name. You may wish to rename Spool if you already have a program called Spool and you wish to keep both in your C directory. Here are two examples of the SPOOL command, one which tells ClickDOS II you have renamed Spool, and one which tells ClickDOS II that Spool is somewhere other than the C: directory: SPOOL=C:Print_It; SPOOL=DH0:ClickDOS_Programs/Spool; If you wish to both rename Spool and move it to another directory, you would use a SPOOL command something like this: SPOOL=DH0:ClickDOS_Programs/Print_It; WARNING: ClickDOS II only allocates 49 bytes to store the location of Spool. You need to be sure that the string which follows your SPOOL command is not more that 49 characters long. CLONE - This option allows you to tell ClickDOS II if you want the CLONE function to be on or off by default. If you want cloning on, then use: CLONE=Y; If you want cloning off, then use: CLONE=N; DSPLY - This option allows you to tell ClickDOS II which display mode you want the directory areas to use by default. You follow the DSPLY command with one of the following letters: S - display file size in bytes D - display file creation date T - display file creation time P - display protection bits C - show if a file has a comment B - display file size in blocks N - show nothing but the file names For example: DSPLY=D; ILACE - You use this option to tell ClickDOS II that you want to take advantage of the extra space available on an interlace Workbench screen. If you use an interlace Workbench screen and you want ClickDOS to expand to fill the entire screen use: ILACE=Y; If you use an interlace Workbench but DO NOT want ClickDOS II to expand to fill the screen use: ILACE=N; or leave this command out entirely. If you do not use an interlace Workbench screen then ClickDOS II will ignore this command. SHELL - You use this command to tell ClickDOS II which command to execute to start a new CLI rather than the default (C:NEWCLI), for example: SHELL=C:NEWSHELL; this would tell ClickDOS II to use the new AmigaDOS 1.3 NewShell command to start new CLI's. You can also follow this command with a valid console definition to tell ClickDOS II how to open the CLI window, for example: SHELL=C:NEWSHELL CON:0/0/640/100/My_New_CLI; See your AmigaDOS manual for more about console definitions. CONSL - This command tells ClickDOS II what console definition to use to open the STD IO console window for the RUN and EDIT actions. You follow this command with any valid console definition, for example: CONSL=CON:0/0/640/100/My_spawned_task; See your AmigaDOS manual for more about console definitions. CNFRM - This command allows you to tell ClickDOS II to warn you when you are about to delete an entire directory of data. By default ClickDOS II will NOT warn you. If you would like to have confirmation of directory deletes then use: CNFRM=Y; Otherwise use: CNFRM=N; STIME - This command allows you to set the delay time which the SHOW action uses while displaying a picture. By default the SHOW action pauses five seconds for each picture. You can use this command to make this delay longer or shorter. For example: STIME=10; would set the SHOW delay to ten seconds. The value for STIME must be between 1 and 90 seconds. SBUFF - This command lets you change the default size of the spool buffer which ClickDOS II tells the Spool program to allocate. See the description of the Spool program in appendix A for more information about the spool buffer. To change the size of the spool buffer use the following command in the ClickDOS-Startup file: SBUFF=XXXXX; where XXXX is the size of the spool buffer in bytes. The size of the spool buffer which you specify must be at least 1K (1024) and must be a multiple of 1024 (i.e. 1024 must divide into the value evenly.) For example: SBUFF=10240; would set the spool buffer to 10K. EEDIT - You use this option to specify the editor which you would like the EDIT action to use. You need to include the entire path to the editor program. For example: EEDIT=C:ed; This would cause ClickDOS II to use the ed editor which is in the directory where C: is assigned. EDSTD - You use this option to tell ClickDOS II if it should open a standard input/output window for the editor to use. If your editor needs a standard input/output window then use: EDSTD=Y; otherwise use: EDSTD=N; You will need to experiment with your editor to determine if it needs a standard input/output window. A good rule of thumb to use is if your editor opens its own window you will probably NOT need an input/output window. V1.20 ANIMV - You use this command to tell ClickDOS II which ANIM viewer to use to show ANIM files. ClickDOS II will automatically start this program passing it the name ANIM file if you select an ANIM file then click on the SHOW action. You need to include the name of the ANIM viewer and the entire path to the program after this command. For example: ANIMV=DH0:utilities/animplay; The ANIM viewer program must be capable of being run with NO IO. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find an ANIM viewer which will show all types of ANIMs. ClickDOS II IS A BIT DETACHED: Whether ClickDOS II is started from CLI or from WorkBench, it will always run as a completely seperate task. If you start ClickDOS II from a CLI, ClickDOS II will immediately detach itself from the CLI. So ClickDOS II will never take over a CLI as most programs do. And you will NEVER have to start ClickDOS II using the RUN command. STOPPING ClickDOS II: OK FINE, BUT HOW DO I GET OUT OF THIS THING: Click the close gadget! KNOWN BUGS None known at this time! However, you should use the RUN action with care. Appendix A - The Spool Program Spool is a printer spooling program which should have been included on the ClickDOS II distribution disk. ClickDOS II will automatically start Spool, if it is not already in memory, and turn printing over to it when you use the PRINT action. You can use the SPOOL option in the ClickDOS-Startup file to tell ClickDOS where to find the Spool program. NOTE: Spool and ClickDOS communicate intimately using Inter-Task Messages. You CANNOT substitute a different spooler program for Spool! Spool records the name and full path of the files sent to it and then reads the files directly from disk and sends them to the printer using the DOS PRT: device. By default the Spool program does very little buffering so it uses only a small amount of memory; Spool is about 8K itself and it opens a 5K buffer. The Spool window is very small and will open in the title bar of the ClickDOS II window. Spool will continuously tell you the name of the file it is currently printing. You can cancel ALL printing by clicking the close gadget of the Spool window. ClickDOS II will never put more than one copy of Spool in memory. If you use the PRINT action again before Spool has finished printing, ClickDOS II will tell Spool to add the new files names to its queue of files waiting to be printed rather than starting Spool a second time. Once Spool is started, it will stay in memory even after it has finished printing. When Spool is not printing but sitting idle waiting for something to print, it will display "Waiting..." in it's window. Spool is also very nice to use from a CLI. You can spool one or more files to the printer by typing: SPOOL filename filename filename ... Spool will start itself and begin printing the file(s). You cannot use wildcards with Spool. If you need to print a large number of files, use ClickDOS II. The nice thing about Spool, which makes it better than something like: RUN TYPE filename is that if you decide you want to print more files, you do not have to wait for the first file(s) to finish printing. You can simply execute the Spool command again with more file names. Everytime Spool is started, it looks to see if there is a copy of itself already in memory. If it finds a copy of itself, it simply tells the other copy to add the new files to its queue of files waiting to be printed. If it does not find itself in memory, then it prints the files itself. As stated above, Spool normally does very little buffering. This means that the disk which Spool is reading the file from, must stay in the drive. This is not a problem for hard drives but can be annoying for floppies. You can have ClickDOS II increase the size of the buffer Spool uses with the SBUFF option in the ClickDOS-Startup files discussed below. If you make the buffer big enough, Spool will be able to read the entire file into memory so that the disk will not have to stay in the drive. You can change the size of the buffer Spool uses "on the fly", even when something is printing, by using the following command at a CLI: SPOOL -bXXXX where XXXX is the size of the buffer you want Spool to use, in bytes. You can issue this command to change the buffer size, even if the printing was started from ClickDOS II. The print buffer cannot be less than 1K (1024) and must be a multiple of 1024 (i.e. 1024 must divide into the value evenly.) There will be times when Spool will have problems: not enough memory, printer not ready, etc. Unfortunately Spool's window is too small to print an error message. Therefore, when Spool has problems it will flash the screen and display in its window the message: FATAL ERROR # XX where XX is one of the following numbers: 1 - A buffer cannot be allocated for spooling. This usually means you are low on memory. Spool will shut down gracefully after this error. Try starting Spool with a smaller buffer. You can do this AND spool a file at the same time like this: SPOOL -bXXXX filename 2 - Spool cannot write to the printer for some reason. Spool will shut down gracefully after this error. Check your printer. Make sure you are not trying to print with two different programs at the same time. 3 - A file you wanted to print could not be open for some reason. The file may have an error in it. If you spooled the file from a CLI try again, but specifying the full path to the file, for example: SPOOL dh0:myfiles/myfile This is not a fatal error, even though Spool will report it as such. Spool will simply go to the next file in its queue and continue printing. 4 - Can't allocate a required internal structure. If you get this error you problably are running low on memory. Spool will shut down gracefully. 5 - Cannot re-size the buffer. Spool received a request to re- size its print buffer, but after closing the old one, it cannot open a new buffer of the requested size. Spool will shut down gracefully. Spool closes the old buffer before opening the new buffer, so that both buffers do not have to be allocated in memory at the same time. Try restarting Spool with a smaller buffer.