
     DirMenu (Directory Menu)  2.22 (27 Jul 93)
     ------------------------------------------

This utility provides an easy way to access directories/files of your disc 
and resource filing systems without thrashing through endless filer windows.

It provides hierachical menus containing the tree structure of any of your 
filing systems. These menus can be opened either by clicking with <Select> on 
one of DirMenu's icon-bar icons, clicking Alt-<Menu> in a Filer window, or 
just <Menu> on the title-bar of a Filer window.

Choosing an item in a menu will do exactly the same thing as double-clicking 
it in a normal Filer window - i.e. open directories, load files, or run apps. 
!DirMenu just does a '*Filer_Run ...' on whatever you clicked on, so hold down 
<shift> to open app dir's / load files into your text editor, or <ctrl> to 
open a dir without booting apps. Selecting a menu item with <Adjust> will keep 
the menu open.

Clicking Alt-<Menu> inside a filer window, or <Menu> on the title-bar of a 
filer window, will bring up a menu containing all the parent directories of 
the directory, and also the contents of the directory. 
This allows you to access the directory, its sub-directories, or any of its 
parents very easily, and also branch out into any part of the directory's 
filing system. 

DirMenu comes set up to have one icon-bar icon. Clicking <Select> on it will 
bring up a menu containing the contents of ADFS::4 (your hard drive, if you 
have one), as well items leading to your Resource filing system, your scrap
directory, the Currently Selected Directory (CSD) and whatever is in your 
floppy disc drive.

The text file 'Configs' in DirMenu's application directory contains 
configuration info which is read by DirMenu when it starts up. Amongst other 
things, the number of icon-bar icons and their menu contents can be changed 
by editing the file using !Edit or similar. See next section.


Clicking <Menu> on any DirMenu bar-icon will bring up a conventional Info/Quit 
menu, with these other items:

   Help          - loads this file into your text-editor.
   Edit Configs  - loads 'Configs' into your text-editor for editing.
   Update        - re-scan 'Configs'. Do this if you change 'Configs' while 
                   DirMenu is running.



Specifying Icon-bar menus, and other options.
---------------------------------------------

All options are set in the file 'Configs' in the directory !DirMenu. To change 
the options, you should edit the file using a text editor such as !Edit. If 
DirMenu is running, you will need to choose 'Update' from the normal bar-icon 
menu after saving the new version of configs.

The file contains comments on how to specify the various parameters; it should 
be fairly clear how to change things, so this is just a brief guide:

Things that you can change:

   Number of bar-icons
   Menu colours
   Where to open iconbar menus on the screen
   The contents of each bar-icon

The contents of each bar-icon menu are a series of file paths, e.g. 'ADFS::4.$' 
or 'Resources:'. DirMenu will create a menu containing each of these paths 
separated by gaps. In addition, you can append a '*' to a path, which will 
make DirMenu add the first-level contents underneath the path. i.e. 'ADFS::4.$*' 
will add the contents of the root directory of your hard disc to the menu, 
which saves you moving to a submenu, at the expense of making the root menu 
bigger. 

You should change 'ADFS::4.$*' to contain whatever your hard disc is called, 
i.e. 'ADFS::<discname>.$*'.

General note: Don't append a '.' to any item

Making a separate bar-icon point to a very frequently used directory can be very
convenient. This is made easier if the directory is an application which 
sets a system variable to its location. You can then use <...$Dir> in DirMenu's 
'Configs' file.

You can create a menu of *commands by creating an application dir that contains 
various Obey files, and then make a DirMenu icon wich displays this directory.

Any system variables can be items in a DirMenu menu, by specifying them in 
'Configs', e.g. '@' to get at the CSD, or '<Wimp$ScrapDir>'
    
Note that if an item that you specified looks like a floppy disc, the Wimp will 
ask you to insert it each time you go to that item in the menu tree.



Random nice features:
---------------------

  Configurable colours! Big white menus are a bit of an eye-sore. If you don't 
   like the colour scheme, just alter the 'Configs' file.

  Compatible with Jens Ovesen's FilerPatch. i.e. directories which have been set 
   to look like applications in Filer windows (bit 6 of Access set) are detected, 
   and displayed correctly by DirMenu.

  Text in the menus is padded with spaces so that the highlighting is clear. I
   did this because the Wimp doesn't highlight text+sprite menu-icons very well.
   
  Being able to bring up a menu for a Filer windor by clicking <Menu> on the 
   title bar saves you from having to go to the keyboard. You can have fewer 
   Filer windows open to save desktop clutter, but still have easy access to all 
   your files.
   
  You can set the number of icon-bar icons to be zero. This will save space on 
   the icon bar, but clicking on Filer windows will still work. You will have to
   quit DirMenu from the Task Manager window if you do this.

  DirMenu is set to expand pathnames prior to Filer_Run-ing them, i.e. system
   variables and '@' (representing the CSD) in the path name are expanded. This 
   uses the SWI "OS_FSControl". You can turn this option off by altering 
   'Configs'.


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Other Stuff
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Many thanks to Dominic Symes, for his superb text editor, !Zap, and Jason 
Williams et al for the equally superb Wimp C library, DeskLib.

This program is freeware. It may NOT me used in connection with any profit-
making activities. Please contact me if you want to distribute DirMenu in a 
PD library.

DirMenu is copyright Julian Smith 1993.

Feel free to distribute this program, but you may only distribute the ORIGINAL 
version, with all files present.

If you find this program useful, you might like to make a donation to Amnesty 
International, say 5, by sending me a cheque made out to them.

Can anybody tell me why DirMenu needs more than a 32k wimpslot to run, despite
having a 21K !RunImage ????

Also, please let me know if you have any comments, problems, suggestions or 
praise, (or have found a bug!).



- Julian Smith


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 julians@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
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 or:

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 Department of Psychology
 University of Edinburgh
 7 George Square
 Edinburgh
 EH8 9JZ
 UK
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