CanDo: An Interactive Authoring Tool, Part 4 - New Features of Version 2.51

by Randy Finch

INOVAtronics has released version 2.51 of CanDo. The upgrade comes on three diskettes but does not include any printed pages for updating the manual. All the new features of version 2.51 are described in help files on one of the diskettes. The cost of the upgrade is $25 plus $5 shipping and handling. (Hey, this isn't too bad considering that the first box of ten blank 3-1/2" diskettes I bought back in 1985 for my Amiga 1000 cost $70.) I have been playing with this new version for some time now and would like to relate my experiences.

Installation Choices, NOT!

CanDo 2.51 uses the Installer utility supplied by Commodore to install itself. (For those unfamiliar with Installer, it is a program that reads an ASCII script file containing Installer commands. The installation proceeds according to the script. Installer has features that make it MUCH more versatile than a standard AmigaDOS script. It also provides a standard method of installing software on the Amiga.) After double-clicking the InstallCanDo icon on the installation disk, I was presented with a requester asking me what installation mode I wanted to use: Novice User (all actions automatic), Intermediate User (limited manual control), or Expert User (must confirm all actions). Being the heady person that I am, I chose the Expert User mode. I don't know about you, but only allowing me to decide what directory the program should be copied to is not my idea of treating me as an expert. I was not even prompted as to whether I wanted to install the example files or not. Well, it's not that big a deal. The unwanted files can be deleted after installation, assuming there is enough disk space to hold everything initially.

I made the decision to install to a new directory rather than overwrite CanDo 2.0 (just in case!). The full installation of CanDo 2.51 took up about 1.8 MB of hard drive space.

Apparently, CanDo 2.51 requires AmigaDOS 2.x even though I could not find this information in any of the help files. I became suspicious when I could not read the CanDo 2.51 diskettes on my Amiga 1000 running AmigaDOS 1.3. Upon investigating with my Amiga 2000 running AmigaDOS 2.1, which had no problem reading the diskettes, I found that the diskettes were FastFileSystem (FFS) formatted. If you will recall, FFS was introduced with AmigaDOS 1.3 for hard drives only. You could format floppy diskettes using the FFS, but they were unreadable. If you are still using AmigaDOS 1.3, I highly recommend that you switch to 2.1 -- immediately!

New Examples, NOT!

The example files that come with CanDo 2.51 are essentially the same as the ones that came with version 2.0.

Stand-Alone Applications, NOT! For Commercial Programs

Previous releases of CanDo included a file named DeckBrowser that could be bound with a deck so that it did not require the CanDo shared library. Well, unfortunately, CanDo 2.51 does not include DeckBrowser. Therefore, CanDo.library is required. This library is not freely distributable; it must be licensed from INOVAtronics if you want to distribute it with a program. However, after calling INOVAtronics, I found out that if you are distributing freeware or shareware, you can obtain a free copy of DeckBrowser to bind with your CanDo 2.51 deck. Decks that will be sold commercially cannot use DeckBrowser. Therefore, the software producer will have to purchase a license to distribute CanDo.library. If you are developing commercial CanDo programs and "can do" without the new features of version 2.51, you might want to continue using version 2.0.

Putting On A New (Inter)face

The Main Control Panel (Figure 1) was given an (inter)face lift. The two buttons for Browse and Design have been combined into one big toggle button. The Window Object button was moved from the Objects section to the Cards section of the panel. Copy mode can now be selected via a button rather than a drop-down menu. Two XTra items and one tool in CanDo 2.0 have now been elevated to the status of official objects having their own buttons. These are the Error Object, the RightMouseButton Object, and the Proportional Object. Global routines can now be accessed with a button and the Xtra items now appear in a list directly on the panel.

AmigaGuide in Blue (or gray, or whatever)

CanDo no longer uses its own custom help system. Rather, it now uses AmigaGuide, which is a Commodore supplied help utility (Figure 2). This is good news for programmers who want to add help to their CanDo applications. Why? Because not only does CanDo use AmigaGuide for its own help system, it also has a new function available, AskForHelp, that allows a CanDo script to access a standard AmigaGuide help file. This addresses my concern in Part 1 of this series (September 1993) about having a standard way to add help to a CanDo program. AmigaGuide help files are quite simple to create. They are ASCII files with embedded commands. I will be discussing creating a help file in a future installment.

When I tested the AskForHelp function with a card that used a low resolution screen (320x200), the AmigaGuide help window did not appear. After switching to a medium resolution screen (640x200), it appeared just fine. I do not know at this time if this is a limitation of AmigaGuide or if there is an option available that will allow help windows to appear on low resolution screens.

One disadvantage of the switch to the AmigaGuide help system is that you can no longer have command templates automatically inserted into your script. Sometimes you just can't have your cake and eat it too.

AmigaGuide allows you to print all or part of the currently displayed help file via a drop-down menu. One feature I would like to see added is for the window title to also be printed along with the help text. Sometimes the help file does not have any title other than the window title.

One interesting anomaly I noticed is that the up, down, left, and right scroll button imagery is missing when AmigaGuide is used from within CanDo. However, the buttons are still functional. Also, I could not access the help text for the new command InsertBufferList. I have passed this information on to INOVAtronics, and they are checking into it.

BigED

CanDo 2.0 had an option called BigED that increased the size of the script editor. The latest version no longer has this option since the standard editor is larger (Figure 3) than the BigED editor in the earlier version.

The editor now supports user-defined command shortcuts. You must create a file called EditorShortCuts.Doc in the CanDoFiles directory. This file should contain a list of shortcut keywords along with the text that is to be substituted for the keywords. In the editor, you can type the keyword and then press Shift-Space; the replacement text will be inserted. There are two things you should take note of. First, the EditorShortCuts.Doc file is loaded when CanDo loads. Therefore, if you edit the file, you must reload CanDo for the changes to take effect. Second, the keywords are case sensitive. For consistency, you might want to have all lower-case keywords.

One new tool has been added to the editor. It is called the Layout EditorTool. This gives you the ability to flow text onto the screen with user defined left and right margins for each line of text. This allows you to flow text around objects or graphics (Figure 4). Once you are satisfied with the layout you have designed, the tool writes a script for you. Unfortunately, the layout cannot be changed at run time, only at design time by redesigning the layout and writing a new script or editing the existing script.

SuperMover

As a complement to the SuperDuper utility which allows you to duplicate multiple objects, a SuperMover utility had been added. This utility allows you to select multiple objects on a card and move them as a group to another location on the card. This will come in handy when creating custom objects as described in Part 3 of this series (November 1993). However, I would still like to have the ability to save a group of objects to disk as a custom object for later addition to other cards at any location without any fuss or muss.

AA Support

No, CanDo has not gone into the alcoholics rehabilitation business. Rather, CanDo now supports all the new graphics modes of the AA (or is that AGA? Who knows?) graphics chip set in the Amiga 1200, 4000, and CD32. When the Window Object button is pressed, a large requester is displayed (Figure 5) allowing you to change everything about the window layout of your current card. A click on the Available Modes button brings up a requester showing all of the screen resolutions supported by your Amiga model (Figure 6). You can also put your window on a public screen.

Wine, Women, and Song (well, one out of three ain't too bad)

New commands and system variables have been added to support the playback of song files. What are song files, you ask. Well, after unsuccessfully trying to play SMUS and DMCS files and finding no information in the help files, I called INOVAtronics. It turns out that a song file is either a SoundTracker, NoiseTracker, ProTracker, Oktalizer, MED, or OctaMED module. These modules are played with the support of a shared library named INOVAMusic.library. This is the same library that is used by Directory Opus (DOpus) to play song files. Commands are available to play a song (or a list of songs), pause it, resume it, go to the next or previous song, play faster or slower or normally, set the volume, and set the tempo. The period can be adjusted for each channel individually. Also, system variables are available for obtaining the current song name, tempo, and volume.

Now for a word of warning. When I tried to play an SMUS, DMCS, or MED 3.00 file, CanDo froze up rather than reporting an error as it should. I could click on buttons and pull down menus, but CanDo did not respond. Sometimes the floppy disk drive containing the file would start grinding and not stop until I rebooted. Other times the light would just blink continuously. I reported this problem to INOVAtronics and they will be investigating. The tech support man I talked to said that they did not support the older MED files, only the newer MED and OctaMED files. He said that if I converted the old MED files to SoundTracker format, they should work. I tried this and it did work -- somewhat. Apparently, some information is lost going to this format. I sometimes experienced instruments not sounding right and other times the tempo screwed up in mid-song. Make sure you are trying to play a supported song format. The best way to do this is to try playing the song from within DOpus. It does not freeze up if the format is not supported. If the song does not sound right, you can click on the Play button again and the song will stop. By the way, INOVAtronics said they will add support for the DMCS format when Electronic Arts releases information about the format.

ASL

When you use the AskForFilename function under CanDo 2.51, you will be presented with the standard file requester (Figure 7) from Commodore's ASL shared library. Gone is the non-standard CanDo file requester and good riddance. This requester was always irritating to me because the OK and Cancel buttons were in reverse order from the standard and the 3D buttons were recessed rather than raised.

File patterns can be passed to the ASL file requester as well as various flags and mode information. You can even specify that the requester accept multiple file selections.

Graphics Printing

Two new commands are available for printing the current screen or the current window to the Preferences printer using the current graphics settings. I tested both of these commands on my Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4 printer and they worked perfectly. (See the sidebar for some important information about the HP LaserJet 4.)

Summing Up

There are several other new features in CanDo 2.51 such as a requester with user-defined selections, the ability to insert a list of buffers and a list of public screens into a document, matching lines in a document to an AmigaDOS pattern, and turning display promotion on and off. The color selectors used in some of the system requesters now show the color number. The font requester is now cached allowing faster displays. Also, Compugraphic and Color fonts are fully supported.

All in all, the new features of CanDo 2.51 are well worth the $30 upgrade cost. I was hoping for more additions, but I guess I will have to wait for version 3.0.

Stay tuned for future installments. I plan to discuss adding help to your CanDo applications, creating Workbench utilities, synchronizing sound with animations, and more.


Back to list of articles
Back to Randy Finch's Home Page
Last modified on April 1, 1996
Randy Finch at webmaster@rcfinch.com