Workbench ARexx shortcommings

Post Reply
kolla
Posts: 54
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2018 10:38 am

Workbench ARexx shortcommings

Post by kolla »

First...
The wbarexx.guide says about the "ROOT" window (aka Workbench desktop) that this is where Volume icons and AppIcons live, but this is also where left-out icons live. Sadly there is no easy way ask Worbench through AREXX about the full path to a file associated to an icon, for left out icons, one must "manually" scan through .backdrop files on all volumes to find a match. Workbench does sit on this information though, as opening a WBInfo window will show the full path.

I request for a way to get the full path of files associated with icons...

Code: Select all

GETATTR WINDOW.ICONS.{all,selected,unselected}.N.PATH
Second...
There is no direct way to perform menu/hotkey scripts on files associated with selected icons. As a counter example, with ToolsDaemon one can use "[]" to represent "all selected icons" - I do not see any equivalent for this in the CMD part when adding a keyboard shortcut or menu entry using WB ARexx. So it is not directly possible, for example, to select a file and pick "Edit" in the menu to open selected file with TextEdit. What is possible to is to use a wrapper script in CMD instead of the actual program, and attempt to build the path of the selected files, and then pass them on as argument to programs, but then the limitation I first mentioned quickly becomes an obstacle.

So, inspired by ToolsDaemon (and I don't see any good reason to not to just do the same), I request for "[]" to represent full paths to all selected icons/files in CMD under KEYBOARD and MENU. For example...

Code: Select all

KEYBOARD ADD NAME Edit KEY '"shift ctrl e"' CMD "'address command ''TextEdit []'''"
MENU ADD NAME edit1 TITLE '"Do stuff..."' CMD 'myrexxscript "[]"'
(quotes in arexx is a nightmare already, and in this web editor, double so. I may have unmatched quotes in my suggestion, but I hope that doesn't stand in the way of the gist of my request)
kolla
Posts: 54
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2018 10:38 am

Re: Workbench ARexx shortcommings

Post by kolla »

Nothing changed here with 3.2.2 as far as I can tell - not much at all changed since 3.2.1 it seems, just rendering of text mode according to release notes.
Post Reply