ABOUT AUTORAISE AutoRaise is supplied with the Edith Professional system. It is a GEM accessory that raises windows for you. It is freeware, but works best in combination with Edith. HISTORY The first version (1.1) of AutoRaise was released in 1991. It was widely spread partly as it appeared on the cover disk of the British magazine ST User. An enhanced version was posted in march 1993, which had a much smarter way of deciding whether the user would actually like a window to be topped or not. The early versions were very small (around 2K). Starting from version 3.0, the size of the accessory is about 30K. A small price to pay for the people who asked me to make the update: this version is specially adapted for Falcon, WINX and MultiTOS. Why is it that big? Because I was lazy and used the custom ZFC library for building large applications. COPYING AutoRaise is freeware. You may freely copy and distribute the AutoRaise executable, provided that this document file is included, and ABSOLUTELY NO MONEY is charged for it. For distribution as a cover disk issue or PD disk please contact ZFC. AutoRaise and these documents are (C) 1994 ZFC Computing. All rights reserved. WHY USE AutoRaise 1. If you have always had to click on a window to top it, especially with single tasking TOSes, you simply don't know what you've been missing. Try AutoRaise, and you will feel far more comfortable with GEM than you did (it might even prevent you from buying that cheap Pentium you saw in the paper this morning...) 2. If you use/have used Double Click's 'equivalent' DCTOPPER: this program sticks to all conventions and is hence TOS-independent. It tops windows less quickly, and hardly ever tops a window when you don't want it to. HOW TO INSTALL Put AUTORAIS.ACC and AUTORAIS.CFG in the root folder of your boot drive. If you are using the Edith Professional system, put this text in the Edith help folder, and make sure that a copy of the EDITRESS.ENV file is in the same directory as AUTORAIS.ACC. DESCRIPTION, INSTRUCTIONS When AUTORAIS.ACC is installed, its name appears in the Desk menu. When you click on the menu item, a control window pops up. 1. for all TOS versions The switches you're interested in are `Auto-Top' and `Save'. These are used to switch the AutoRaise function on and off, and to save this in the configuration file AUTORAIS.CFG. If Auto-Top is switched ON, you can raise windows by simply moving the mouse onto it. However: - A window is topped only after the mouse has been stationary for one tenth of a second. So you can still move the mouse across a background window without causing it to be topped. - Windows will not be topped when any of the four shift keys or the mouse buttons are held down. So e.g. when you wish to drag a file out of a background window of the desktop, hold down the right button, then move to the background window and pick up the file. - AutoRaise does not allow the current top window to get completely covered when it tops a window. - Any change of the top window NOT caused by mouse movement will be `respected', so you can open and close windows by key commands without having to worry about getting the mouse on the right window. AutoRaise will not top a window until you've moved the mouse again. 2. for FALCON, MULTITOS or WINX The control window now also contains a section for setting more detailed preferences. The scroll widget on the upper left always contains one item `Default' and may contain the names of a number of GEM applications and accessories. The three switches in the lower half of the AutoRaise panel are used to make application-dependent settings. If the name of an application does not appear in the widget, the `default' settings apply. The switches are stored per application. To set the behaviour for a particular application, click on its name and set the switches. Applications can be added and removed from the list using the `New' and `Delete' buttons. The settings can be saved by clicking on the `Save' buttons. The meaning of the three switches is as follows: A. Raise windows locally--- if this switch is ON, the accessory will automatically switch between windows of the selected application(s). B. Raise windows from this application--- if this switch is OFF, windows from other applications will not be raised when this application owns the top window. C. Raise windows to this application--- if this switch is OFF, windows of this application will not be raised when the current top window belongs to another application. Many programs nowadays make use of the new features of MultiTOS. Two of these features can be a reason for NOT wanting some windows to be raised: A. Some windows receive left button mouse clicks in background windows. Therefore it may not be necessary to raise a window at all. B. More and more state-of-the-art software packages (such as Edith, the text editress) can be configured to send keyboard information not to the top window, but to the window which the mouse points to. It is then very annoying when background windows are automatically topped. However, it is still convenient to automatically switch to windows of another application. --- 18th September 1994 ZFC P.O.Box 12079 1100 AB Amsterdam The Netherlands Phone: +31 20 695 9901 Internet: A.V.Groenink@zfc.nl WWW/Mosaic: http://www.nl.net/~zfc/index.html