Wife friendly startup-sequence

A forum for general AmigaOS 4.x support questions that are not platform-specific
User avatar
fingus
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2011 6:10 pm

Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by fingus »

My wife just need MuiOWB so my idea was it to let AmigaOS4.1 just boot a shell and then starting Mui-OWB.
And for me it should boot completely into workbench by pressing a Key (Shift for example) while booting.

Is this easily possible?
User avatar
Phantom
Posts: 74
Joined: Sun Jun 19, 2011 2:15 pm
Location: Colossal Cave, Valaii
Contact:

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by Phantom »

Why you don't let your wife experiment with AmigaOS 4 a little bit. I let mine while she was using only MUI-OWB for the internet, but now she likes AmigaOS too. ;)

Anyway, it's not difficult to achieve what you want, just a small ARexx script will do the job in user-startup.
To Be A True Adventurer, You Ought To Play Real Text Adventures
User avatar
nbache
Beta Tester
Beta Tester
Posts: 1714
Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:25 pm
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Contact:

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by nbache »

I wouldn't recommend you to not load Workbench, MUI-OWB - like most Amiga progarms with a GUI - is likely to want to live in the WB environment. Tricks like customised Startup-Sequences in order to load a game or app directly from a diskette without wasting precious memory on WB became obsolete decades ago ;-).

But there's no reason why MUI-OWB couldn't be loaded automatically as part of the WBStartup, so your wife sees it appear and can start using it without having to interact with WB.

Just add it to the list in the WBStartup prefs.

Best regards,

Niels
Deniil
Posts: 109
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2011 6:59 pm

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by Deniil »

Would it really be that difficult for her to click an icon in AmiDock? She doesn't even have to double-click :-)
Or you could leave out the icon on the WB screen if you're not using AmiDock.
User avatar
nbache
Beta Tester
Beta Tester
Posts: 1714
Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:25 pm
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Contact:

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by nbache »

Deniil wrote:Would it really be that difficult for her to click an icon in AmiDock? She doesn't even have to double-click :-)
Or you could leave out the icon on the WB screen if you're not using AmiDock.
Ah, come on, when did you last see such a brilliant combination of a great tinker opportunity combined with a large WAE (Wife Appreciation Effect)? I'd say go for it! :-D

Best regards,

Niels
User avatar
fingus
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2011 6:10 pm

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by fingus »

nbache wrote:
Deniil wrote:Would it really be that difficult for her to click an icon in AmiDock? She doesn't even have to double-click :-)
Or you could leave out the icon on the WB screen if you're not using AmiDock.
Ah, come on, when did you last see such a brilliant combination of a great tinker opportunity combined with a large WAE (Wife Appreciation Effect)? I'd say go for it! :-D

Best regards,

Niels
I´m using Amidock and she know how to find and press OWB-MUI-Icon ;-)

But i have a 5-Button-Mouse and the 5th side button is configured to switch to the next screen. And almost EVERY Programm i´ve installed have get their own screen, i´m a bit of a screen-fetish :o

One time she was confused that owb disapeard when she came on that button and just see the workbench and don´t know to find it again and start just a new instance which always opens on workbench screen :lol:

The basic idea behind that was to kill all possibilities to fail like the story above ;-)

Greetings from Germany,
Niels
whose
Posts: 92
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2011 3:11 pm

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by whose »

Hey Niels,

did you test if MUI-OWB starts without a fully loaded WB in the meantime? If it does, it shouldnt be that hard to make a "CheckShift" shell command that gives back 0 or 5, so that you could spawn a different startup-sequence for "MUI-OWB only" or "full Workbench".

Only drawback of this method would be, that you might be forced to modify your s-s again with the next big update.
User avatar
nbache
Beta Tester
Beta Tester
Posts: 1714
Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:25 pm
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Contact:

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by nbache »

whose wrote:Hey Niels,

did you test if MUI-OWB starts without a fully loaded WB in the meantime?
No. I'd consider such a move an unacceptable and unnecessary hack (partly because it would need to be maintained, "re-hacked", with future system updates), so I wouldn't want to waste time on it, when the benefit can be created simpler via WBStartup.

Did you?

Best regards,

Niels
User avatar
nbache
Beta Tester
Beta Tester
Posts: 1714
Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:25 pm
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Contact:

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by nbache »

fingus wrote:But i have a 5-Button-Mouse and the 5th side button is configured to switch to the next screen. And almost EVERY Programm i´ve installed have get their own screen, i´m a bit of a screen-fetish :o

One time she was confused that owb disapeard when she came on that button and just see the workbench and don´t know to find it again and start just a new instance which always opens on workbench screen :lol:

The basic idea behind that was to kill all possibilities to fail like the story above ;-)
You could disable the commodity (DepthToFront?) from inside the OWB launch script.

Also, remember that you can skip WBStartup completely by holding down a Shift or Alt key during startup. Then you could have an alternative to run to give you your own preferred environment, maybe in the form of a script launched from an AmiDock icon; if necessary, such a script can also launch WB programs using WBRun.

So, roughly described, you'd set up WBStartup to load what your wife needs, and the alternative script to make your own environment.

Best regards,

Niels
User avatar
Severin
Beta Tester
Beta Tester
Posts: 189
Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 1:41 pm

Re: Wife friendly startup-sequence

Post by Severin »

Grab an old app from aminet called mousewarn, with that in your startup-sequence you can setup a custom startup-sequence and user-startup that is activated if you hold the left mouse button down during bootup or if you want something with a more visual feedback use Requestchoice to ask who's using the system. something like this should work...

Code: Select all

set answer `requestchoice "User Selection" "Who is booting the system?" "Him|Her"`
if $answer EQ 1
  if exists envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs
    rename envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs.off
  endif
  loadwb
  wait 5 ;let the network stuff finish loading... 
  wbrun appdir:OWBLauncher
else
  if exists envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs.off
    rename envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs.off envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs
  endif
  loadwb
  wait 5
  Run >NIL: *>NIL: C:SoundPlayer QUIET
endif
unset answer ;not needed but neater ;)
EndCLI >NIL:
Or for mousewarn:

Code: Select all

mousewarn
if warn
  if exists envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs.off
    rename envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs.off envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs
  endif
  loadwb
  wait 5
  Run >NIL: *>NIL: C:SoundPlayer QUIET
else
  if exists envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs
    rename envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs envarc:sys/wbstartup.prefs.off
  endif
  loadwb
  wait 5 ;let the network stuff finish loading... 
  wbrun appdir:OWBLauncher
endif
EndCLI >NIL:
I think that should work, it's a very long time since I used mousewarn.
Post Reply