M A G N E T I C P A G E S: Displayer (V1.0) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is the program used to view a magazine. In addition to displaying the magazine, the reader may save text as a standard ascii file, save an entire page as an IFF picture, or print the text and/or graphics on a page. Running the Displayer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Displayer can be run from the CLI or the Workbench. In addition to the actual magazine articles, the Displayer requires a special control file which contains information about the magazine contents. This control file is created using the Organiser and unless you have this program you can't make a magazine. Running from CLI: The displayer has one argument, the AmigaDos path/name of the control file. This control file may be called anything and located anywhere on the disk. eg. 1> Displayer My_Mag ^ ^ | | | Control file name | CLI prompt Running from Workbench: To run the Displayer from Workbench, the Displayer must have an icon. The control file must be in the same directory as the Displayer and must be called Mag_Ctrl. Unfortunately this is not a nice way of doing it but because of an annoying bug (see Annoying Bug below) this was the only way I could do it. Ideally the control file would have the icon and using the 'Default Tool' field it would automatically load the Displayer. As soon as the bug is fixed, it will operate this way. If you want more than one magazine on a disk, I suggest you use something like IconX or XIcon so it thinks it is running from a CLI. Memory Requirements ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An optimum setup is an Amiga with 512k of Chip ram and 512k of Fast Ram. However it will run on all other configurations. It is up to the magazine editor to make sure that all articles can be displayed on a 512k machine. When an article is loaded, the Displayer will try and load it all into Fast ram. Then when a page is displayed, any graphics, sound or music needed for the page will be copied into Chip ram. As the graphics are copied to Chip Ram they will also be decompressed. The worst situation is displaying a page containing sound or music on a 512k machine. The Displayer doesn't know the sound/music is already in Chip ram, and goes ahead and makes another copy in chip ram. This is a bit wasteful and may be changed in future versions. As all 2000's have at least 512k of Chip and 512k of Fast and most 500 owners soon expand their machines to 1 Meg, this should not be much of a problem. Using the Displayer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Moving around a magazine: The most basic operation is moving around the magazine. On a standard text page, you can use the menus or gadgets. On a custom graphics page you have to use the menu commands. The menu bar is hidden so it is important that people realise this is the only method of getting off a graphics page. The commands for moving around the magazine are as follows: Menu Command Gadget KeyBoard ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ Next Page > RIGHT ARROW - Takes you to the next page in an article. If you are on the last page of an article, you will be taken to the first page of the next article. Previous Page < LEFT ARROW - Takes you to the previous page in an article. If you are on the first page of an article, you will be taken to the last page of the previous article. Next Article >> UP ARROW - Takes you to the next article in the magazine. If you are at the last article of the magazine, you will be taken back to the first article. Previous Article << DOWN ARROW - Takes you to the previous article in the magazine. If you are on the first article of the magazine, you will be taken to the last article. Contents Contents SPACE BAR - This depends on the layout of the magazine and where you currently are. For example a magazine may be divided up into various sections. Eg articles, reviews, Feedback, Art Gallery, etc. There may also be a main contents page which has icons on it that allow you to branch to the different sections. Once you have branched to a section (eg articles) you should be able to get back to the main contents by selecting the Contents command. As well as moving through a magazine sequentially, a well designed magazine will be divided up into different sections, each with there own contents page. On a contents page, you can select an article to read, or branch to another section by clicking on icons (boxes) on the page. A box that can be clicked on will respond with a push-button effect or with several frames of animation. To get back to the previous contents page, select the 'Contents' command. Sound/Music: Some pages may play a piece of sound or music when you turn to them. This is nothing to be frightened about, it is perfectly normal. If it is a long piece of music or sound, or it has been told to repeat continuously it may not stop until you exit the magazine. You can turn the sound off yourself at any stage by toggling the menu item 'Sound On' in the 'Other' menu. Some pages may also have boxes on them which will play sound/music when you click on them. Save as IFF: This menu command allows you to save one or several pages as IFF pictures. If you want to save off one page, simply enter the filename at the prompt. To save off a whole article, you use the same procedure. Each page will be saved as filename.PAGENUM, where filename is the AmigaDos path/name you entered at the prompt and PAGENUM is the page number. Only pages from the current page to the end of the article will be saved. For example if an article has 6 pages and you are on page 3 when you select 'Save as IFF', only pages 3,4,5 and 6 will be saved. Save Text: This menu command allows you to save a page of text or all the text from an article. The text will be saved as a standard ASCII file. Simply enter the filename at the prompt. Print: This menu command allows you to print a page or a whole article. There are two printing modes available. 'Text Only' will only print out the text on a page. 'Screen Dump' will print out the whole page as a graphics dump, similar to printing on Deluxe Paint. Only pages from the current page to the end of the article will be printed if you choose 'Print Article'. ----------------------------------- Annoying Bug ~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is the bug mentioned earlier when the Displayer is run from the Workbench. What I wanted to do was to be able to click on a control file icon (type Project) which would then load the Displayer. This is a standard way of running this type of program from the Workbench. I was able to get this to work to a certain extent. You could click on a control file icon, which would load the Displayer. The Displayer would then load the control file. This is pretty standard and is documented in the Rom Kernel Manuals. The problem was when the Displayer tried to load the first article. As soon as the Displayer tried to open the article, I got a GURU (870000004). I don't think it has anything to do with the load routine, as it has always worked perfectly before. If anyone can help, it would be much appreciated. Upgrades ~~~~~~~~ The Displayer is by no means perfect. I will continue to work on it when I get the time. I'm not promising anything but if enough interest is shown in Magnetic Pages I hope to make the following improvements to the Displayer. * Faster page rendering. * More memory efficient in certain areas. * Speech capabilities so the text may be spoken out loud. * A more flexible sound/music playing technique. * Support for continous animated boxes. * An Arexx port. Only because it's trendy. The above improvements are just a few general ideas I have planned. If you have any suggestions, or complaints please let me know when you order the Organiser. Mark Gladding.