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v1.0 - 29-Jan-2000
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AmigaOS 3.5 FAQ
based on hints, tips and discussions on the mailinglist at Onelist
(amigaOS3_5@onelist.com)
This FAQ is not meant to replace the "official" version at www.amiga.com,
it is an addition to provide answers to questions that appeared on the
mailinglist irritatingly often :) or are worth being mentioned in an FAQ.
If you have additions or corrections to the FAQ, please write to
neurodancer@gmx.de (current FAQ maintainer).
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Abbreviations that may have been used:
S-S = Startup-Sequence (batchfile in S:)
U-S = User-Startup (batchfile in S:)
W-S = WBStartup (drawer on SYS:)
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The Frequently Asked Questions
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Q: I have a GFX board. When I open a window with a lot of icons, a
large amount of chipmem is used. Why is that, and how can I avoid it?
A: By default (and for compatibility reasons), OS 3.5 uses chipmem for
the new icon system. It is possible to use fastmem, the option is
built into the OS - but in order to flick the switch, you need a 3rd
party tool, e.g. WBC or WBCtrl (in the "Contributions" drawer of the
CD - more recent version however on Aminet).
The most common tool is WBCtrl by Stefan Rupprecht, GFX board owners
just have to add "WBCtrl IMT=FAST" somewhere in their U-S, et voila.
[these two tools are NO HACKS, no patching is done. "WB2Fast" however is
the one program that hacks into the OS instead of using the legal
built-in methods]
NOTE: WB will still use a small portion of chipmem whenever you open
a window, copy files etc. etc. - why? We don't know either. This can
only be avoided by using WB2Fast.
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Q: I don't have a GFX board - can I render the icons in fastram anyway?
A: Yes, if you have an AGA Amiga, install "FBlit" and you can use
WBCtrl, it is aware of the FBlit patch as of v1.3 (from Aminet, not
from the CD!), and your icons will use fastram then. John Wasilewski
originally compiled a summary of what to do and were for the list, so
credit him. Here's the "how to" in short:
Add to your S-S after the "copy ENVARC: etc." line:
FBlit
WBCtrl IMT=ICONFAST
And then add "SIMPLEGELS" to the LoadWB command, so that the last two
lines look like this:
LoadWB SIMPLEGELS
EndCLI
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Q: What does "LoadWB SIMPLEGELS" do?
A: It reverts the system to the old OS 3.1 style of selecting and
dragging icons, solid and positioning one at a time. The new OS 3.5
way is greyed or dotty icons and positioning all at once. On my
A1200T, SIMPLEGELS prevents the 300K Chip RAM loss when using FBlit
and WBCtrl on AGA. (Michael Rye)
[another user reported his system (using a BVisionPPC with CGX4) was very
unstable until he used the "SIMPLEGELS" option, if you are experiencing
problems you might give it a try, even if you're using a GFX board]
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Q: DOpus5 does not display the new 3.5 icons, why?
A: The icon format of WB 3.5 is different to previous icon formats,
and it is not the NewIcons format either. You need to download the
update patch for DOpus from the website of GP Software.
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Q: What are the programs in the "Converter-Scripts" directory for?
A: These tools were not intended to be on the CD; Olaf Barthel
provided the mailinglist with the following answer:
ClockIcon: Tests a new AppIcon feature: in V44 workbench.library
allows the owner of an AppIcon to render the icon image itself.
This allows for a clock display to be updated in an AppIcon
image (NB: check out the new tool "AnimatedIcon" from BoingBag1)
CondenseIcons: This reads an icon, drops the planar icon image
and any associated NewIcons tool types and writes the icon back
to disk. This will result in space savings.
Convert8ColorIcons: This reads an 8 colour image, attaches a
default 8 colour palette to it and writes it back to disk.
ConvertMagicWBIcons: This reads a MagicWB icon and writes it back
to disk in the new V44 icon.library format (including the
matching palette).
ConvertNewIcons: This reads a NewIcons format icon and writes it
back to disk in the new V44 icon.library format.
GlowIconImage: This reads image files, applies the glow effect
and writes the result to disk as a V44 format icon.
ImageToIcon: This reads an image file and writes it to disk as a
V44 format icon.
LayoutIcon: This tests the new V44 icon.library LayoutIconA()
code.
StripIcons: This reads an icon, removes the NewIcons tool types
or the V44 palette information and writes it back to disk.
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Q: Is there a way to make "DefIcons" work with OS 3.5?
A: You can use "DefIcons44" (from Aminet), its the replacement for OS
3.5, even comes with a prefs editor, and is yet another useful tool by
Stefan Rupprecht - Stefan, we all really owe you a big one.
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Q: My AWeb toolbar buttons are trashed, can I fix them?
A1: This is mentioned in the original FAQ as well, but you can fix
this very easily, and we on the mailinglist were the first to discover
it: load the toolbar image into a GFX converter and save it as GIF.
A2: Remove the "transparent" tooltype from the animation's .info file,
a user reported this helps as well.
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Q: What do the (new) C: commands "CAPrefs", "Group" and "Owner" do?
They aren't covered in the manual.
A1: CAPrefs is replaced by a dummy file, see next FAQ entry.
A2: Group and Owner lets you alter the owner/group flags in
filesystems that supports this. They used to be part of AS225 and
Envoy. Note that OS3.5 C:List now also supports users/groups options.
(Kolbjørn Barmen)
A3: There are some other news in with shell commands: List now finally
has a sort option: List sort N = sort name
List sort S = sort size
List sort D = sort date (Martin Steigerwald)
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Q: What happened to "CAPrefs" and the "ClassAct" prefs editor?
A: They are replaced with dummy files by the 3.5 installer and are
needed no longer. OS 3.5's "ReAction" is the successor of ClassAct,
and the prefs are initialized via the normal "IPrefs" command that is
in your S-S anyway.
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Q: Ever since I'm using DefIcons44/TweakWB, my ENV: has grown really
big due to the lot of def_xxx.info files - can't I reduce the memory
usage somehow?
A1: Remove default icons you really don't need ("def_tar" etc. might
be a good candidate)
A2: Optimize the icons using Stefan Rupprechts "CondenseIcons" (from
Aminet), it can remove the old planar image from the icon, convert any
NewIcons "tooltype image" :) into an OS 3.5 image, and save an
optimized result. That can reduce the size of a lot of icons by 50%.
Once ran, CondenseIcons can recurse into directories so you can
convert A LOT of icons in one go (highly recommended for your HD's as
well unless you intend to switch back to OS3.1 :-)
A3: Install HappyENV (Aminet), it copies files from ENVARC: to ENV:
only when they are actually requested by an application, speeding up
booting and saving some RAM as well, as it is optimized for very small
files.
A4: Occasionally browse thru ENVARC: - often there's a lot of old
config files and crap still rotting there, from programs you've
deleted almost ages ago. :)
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Q: Why do other FAQ's still mention that RAWBInfo doesn't work with
3.5 correctly?
A: Because they're poorly maintained. The latest RAWBInfo does indeed
work with OS 3.5 and supports all of its features, plus a lot more
that you may know from the older "SwazInfo".
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