07/08/94
Become a Power User Part 2

* In a directory viewer, Select marks the first item you want 
to act upon, and Adjust allows you to add or remove additional 
items. All marked items will then be acted upon when the 
selection is dragged somewhere or a menu operation upon the 
selection is chosen.

* Double clicking Select runs a file, opens a directory, or 
loads an application. If you use Adjust instead the window which 
you clicked in will be closed as well. This helps dramatically 
in keeping the desktop tidy!

* When you make a menu choice using the Select button the menu 
disappears. If you need to make several choices from a deep level, 
or are experimenting with settings (eg choosing the colours for 
a !Edit window) this quickly gets tedious. If you use Adjust 
instead the menu will stay on the screen, open to whatever level 
of submenus you had reached. Note: This is provided by the 
application concerned, so may not work on every application.

* If you want to bring a window to the front, the usual method is 
to click Select on the title bar. However, you can also click on 
the adjust size icon in the bottom right (when it is present), or 
use the toggle size icon in the top right.

Next month: New features in RISC OS 3.


Changes in Filetype allocation

There are 4096 filetypes, &000-&FFF. Originally half of these were 
set aside for users, with the remainder shared between Acorn, 
AcornSoft and other developers.

During the past year it became apparent that the rate of allocation 
of filetypes has been reaching the level where some rearrangment is 
necessary to avoid running out of filetypes in certain areas in the 
future.

The new distribution of filetypes is:
  
  &000-&0FF - End-users� personal (ie non-distributed) usage
  &100-&3FF - End-users� distributed software (eg PD/Shareware) (Allocation by Acorn)
  &400-&9FF - Commercial software (Allocation by Acorn)
  &A00-&AFF - Commercial software (was AcornSoft) (Allocation by Acorn)
  &B00-&DFF - Commercial software (Allocation by Acorn)
  &E00-&FFF - Acorn use
  
The highlights of the new distribution are:
  
* User area halved to 1024 filetypes

* 75% of the user area is now allocatable by Acorn on behalf of 
PD/Shareware programs

* More filetypes free for commercial software

* Some redundant areas opened for general allocation

Obviously, many programs exist already which have used filetypes 
from the area &100-&7FF. If you are the author of such a program, 
please inform us. We will then record your usage of that filetype 
so that a double allocation does not occur in the future. Please 
note though - this �amnesty� applies only to existing programs - for 
new programs you should contact Acorn to apply for a filetype. Write 
to Customer Services (Filetypes), Acorn Computers Ltd., Acorn House, 
Vision Park, Histon, Cambridge CB4 4AE.

First Word Plus printing

1st Word Plus is a little different to most applications because it 
uses it�s own printer drivers instead of the normal RISC OS drivers 
(!Printers/!PrinterDM etc).  If your printer is not one of those 
supported (or cannot emulate one of these) then you will need to write 
your own printer driver.  This is easiest done by amending the source 
file of an existing driver to contain the correct command codes for 
your printer.  Brief details of how to approach this task are given in 
the 1st Word Plus User Guide.