FileMan On Line Help
This section attempts to outline the scope of configuration and customisation which can be undertaken when using the "FileMan" product. Most of the standard types and options which can be configured are obviously present. Thus it is possible to give a particular file type a double click action and and a suitable icon. However, for a few examples of what can be configured, below is a simple list:
Now that some of the configurable items have been listed, sections below will give more details for various topics regarding configuration:
This section documents only changing the configuration for a particular user - though it is possible to modify the operation of the package to ensure that certain menu options can appear globally no matter what the user changes in their local configuration files.
Each user of the program should have a configuration file called ".ufm_menus". This contains the menu configuration for that particular user, and should exist in their home directory. Before any changes are made a backup should be created. Also note that a temporary cached file should be removed as well for any changes to be picked up by FileMan. This can be done by removing the ".ufm_menus.tmp" file.
It is also possible to change the behaviour of the double click functionality of any type of file. This is tied in with the icon and a text description of the type - also which can be changed. The basic definitions of each of these can be found in the file called ".ufm_types", again found in each user's home directory.
The format of each of the lines in the file is as follows:
:ext(Z)=gfm_compressed_3d {blue} {#compress __ARG__} {Compressed file}
The first section is :ext(Z)= this defines the type of file by the extension on the file name. This is the simplest method of defining types, but not the only one. In this case it will match for files such as "simon.Z".
The first word after this is the name of the graphic image to use to represent the file. This does not exclude the extension of the file. This should be the name of a file from the ./3Dpixmaps directory of the package installation. Please ensure that the file name also has "mini" and "midi" versions in this directory.
The word following WAS the colour of the icon - however, this is not used any more and can be any single word.
The next section, such as {#compress __ARG__} is the actual double-click command to run for this file type. Note that the "#" is used to indicate that after the command has been executed perform an update of the partition window contents. The command to run is an operation system command, and must exist in the command registry file.Finallly, the __ARG__ word is replaced by the name of the file which has been double-clicked apon.
It is possible to specify "internal" tcl commands, but this is beyond the scope of this documentation.
The final section, which is {Compressed file} in this instance is the textual description of the file type. This information is not used much at the moment, but will be used in the future.
Although many options can be changed by each user, there are a series of configuration files that are system wide. These are used by the inital start up sequence to ensure that valid values are assigned to most variables. However, the system administrator is quite likely to wish to change some of these defaults, and so these files are free text "TCL" files.
These files are in the directory called "./Config/GLOBALS/<ARCHITECTURE>", relative to the installation directory of the product. Note that there are a set of the three configuration files for each architecture supported. Thus, for Linux, the files to modify are in the directory called "./Config/GLOBALS/LINUX".
Explanation of the use and contents of the files can be found in the written manual.