Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!super!udel!rochester!rutgers!att!mtunf!arr
From: arr@mtunf.ATT.COM (Andrew Raffman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: What are menus?
Summary: done before
Message-ID: <860@mtunf.ATT.COM>
Date: 18 Jan 89 23:05:35 GMT
References: <3234@sugar.uu.net> <1472@zen.UUCP> <2308@nunki.usc.edu> <15045@cisunx.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA
Lines: 50

In reference to having a printer icon into which files are dropped to print
things,
In article <15045@cisunx.UUCP>, ejkst@cisunx.UUCP (Eric J. Kennedy) writes:
> 
> Well, why couldn't we do this on the Amiga?  We have an icon for the
> rad: disk and the ram: disk, why couldn't an icon be made for the prt:
> device?  Maybe in ARP wb replacement?  How about 1.4?  The actual
> 'disk.info' file could maybe live in s: or ENV: under 'prt.info'.  But
> it should show up with the disk icons.
> 
> It sure would save a lot of trouble.  There is currently no easy way to
> print a file from the workbench, which strikes me as being rather silly.

	When I first got my amiga, I wrote a program called 
devbuf (or something like that), which would automatically 
create a directory, copy a .info file into it, and 
then wait for files to be dropped into the directory. 
When new file appeared in the directory, it would launch a 
program, passing the name of the file to the program, and
then delete the file after the program had exited. The syntax for calling it
was:
	prnbuf directory icon prog [arg1 .. argm] <> [argm+1..argn]
where:
	directory was where the buffer should be set up
	icon was a .info file to be copied to the directory
	prog was a program to run when a file was placed in the directory
	arg1..argn were the arguments to the program
	<> (I think) was where the name of the file would be filled in. 

To set up a printer buffer in ram:, I would type:
	run prnbuf ram:printer s:printer.info copy from <> to prt:

After this point, a new icon would appear in RAM: (which I would then move
out onto Workbench) which would be my printer device. To print file test.txt,
I would drop drop the file into the icon, which automatically fire off:
	copy from ram:printer/test.txt to prt:
	delete ram:printer/test.txt
To look at the print queue, just double click on the icon.

	The code to do this was only about 100 lines, most of which was
for looking for new files in the directory and ignoring .info files (which
shouldn't be printed). Unfortunately, I lost the source,
but it shouldn't be that hard to recreate. The advantage of this approach
is that it doesn't require a driver, and is infinitely configurable by the
user. Has anyone done something else like this?

Andy Raffman
AT&T Information Systems
mtunf!arr