Prospect - Advanced Virtual Pinboard

by Tony Patterson


Prospect is a replacement for Acorn's Pinboard which provides many extra facilities that have been specifically designed to enhance the Risc PC. It does not work on other Acorn machines. It will work on any Risc PC, though it is at its best on a machine with VRAM and a big monitor that allows desktops with large logical work areas in square pixel modes.

Prospect offers the following facilities in addition to those provided by Pinboard:

Filer window
Instead of files pinned to the backdrop, they are kept by Prospect in a pseudo filing system. Clicking Adjust over the backdrop opens a directory viewer onto this system. This helps to keep the backdrop uncluttered.

Extended filer options
Help, info, keyboard activators and small icon display are available with the Prospect filer.

Passive treatment of unlocated files
Files in the filer that are stored on removable media or network mounts that are not present at start-up are marked in red in the filer window. Once the media becomes available, clicking Adjust on the backdrop will boot such files as normal.

Auto load at boot
Files can be selected for auto-load immediately the machine is switched on. This allows you to leave your machine to boot and load a DTP package and printer drivers (for example) while you do something more interesting.

Extended sprite display options
Reflected tiles, bricks and zoom patterns, aspect locked scaling and randomly chosen sprite options are available.

Free memory display
An indication of available memory with 'memory low' highlighting is provided.

Auto-caret, auto-raise
Prospect can be set up to automatically give the caret to the window under the pointer or to raise the window under the pointer to the top of the window stack.

Shutdown confirmation
Prospect can be configured to request confirmation of a shutdown to prevent accidents becoming disasters

Icon gravity
Iconised windows will travel to any desired window edge rather than being dropped behind the close icon of the window they represent. Subsequently iconised windows are arranged in a line along that edge of the screen.

Icons exist in window stack
Iconised windows are not stuck to the backdrop but can be solid dragged around the Desktop, in front of other windows. They have a title bar as well as back and close icons. The menu of the window which has been iconised is available by just clicking Menu over the work area of the iconised window.

Icon grid-lock
Iconised windows lock on to a grid so that they can be placed accurately when they are dragged around. If you hold down Shift when you drag an icon, the grid is over-ridden and the icon travels smoothly to allow delicate positioning.

Colour configuration
All colours are user-configurable using the Risc PC colour selector if it is available.

Virtual Window Display
This window, shows an area equivalent to six entire screens at the top left of the screen. All open windows are shown on this display where they may be dragged around to other screens which may also be visited.

Tools window
This window allows you to bring other windows to the front or put them to the back even when their window tools aren't visible. It also allows you to make windows sticky or unsticky. Sticky windows are stuck to the screen so that they stay with you while you travel around the virtual desktop.

Options saved to file
All options and files in the Prospect filer are saved internally allowing easy permanent configuration alterations.


Installing Prospect
Running the item from the RISC User master menu system opens an archive containing the installer ProspIns. Double-clicking on this will install Prospect on your hard disc. This will automatically install the following applications:
   ADFS::4.$.Choices.Boot.Tasks.!Prospect
   ADFS::4.$.Choices.Boot.PreDesk.!!!!Prosp
and the font Small, which it uses in its virtual window display. If you ever need to de-install the program, then these are the files which should be deleted. Installation takes less than a minute. You should now run the Configure application by double-clicking on ADFS::4.$.!Boot. Click on Windows and ensure that both the icons in the Allow windows off-screen section of the Window manager window are ticked. Once done, Prospect will be available after the next reset.

Prospect does not provide a replacement for TinyDirs.

A more detailed description together with instructions on using the program can be found in the !Help file inside the application.

Copyright  RISC User 1995
