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Object Desktop Tips- by Alexander Antoniades

Since its initial release, Stardock Systems' Object Desktop has been among the best selling OS/2 applications in the world. Many OS/2 users enjoy greater productivity thanks to Object Desktop's helpful features.

Something many Object Desktop users don't know, however, is that there are many undocumented or often overlooked features of Object Desktop that can make your OS/2 system even more productive and fun to use. We've gathered together a few of them to share with you here.

From Command Prompt to GUI with one (or two) commands

Object Desktop has two commands that allow you to open Workplace Shell objects from any OS/2 command prompt. These commands are "open" and "navigate".

Simply put, the "open" command allows you to view any object you specify from the command line, and the "navigate" command opens any folder using the Object Navigator.

The "open" command's uses, however, don't end with being able to open folders in the Workplace Shell, because the open command opens any object's default view in the Workplace Shell. That means that you can open anything essentially the same as double clicking it in the Workplace Shell. This "opens" up a number of uses when you combine this ability with other Object Desktop features.

Uses for the open command include:

"Open ." would open the current folder's default view in the Workplace Shell.

"Open incoming" would open the incoming directory if it was a sub directory from the current command prompt location.

"Open zipfile.zip" would open the Object Archive view of zipfile.zip.

"Open tob.exe" would start the program tob.exe (this is redundant, but it does work).

"Open word.doc" would open whatever application you have associated with *.doc files or, if you have Object Desktop Professional, it would view word.doc using Object Viewers. Note: the association and Object Viewers for this object can overridden by Extended Attributes saved with the program by another application. This is done by some OS/2 applications such as Star Office and DeScribe.

"Open incoming d" would open the details view of the incoming directory. This is an example of the parameters Open uses to force certain views. These non-case sensitive parameters are:

The navigate command while not as flexible as the open command is nonetheless useful for accessing the Workplace Shell in a hurry. The syntax for the navigate command is:

"Navigate ." to start Object Navigator in the current directory.

"Navigate incoming" to start Object Navigator in the incoming directory, where the incoming directory is a subdirectory of your current path.

Don't use Shadows in the Tab LaunchPad

One performance problem that most people don't know about is having shadows of objects on your Tab LaunchPad. This increases your system overhead at load time or whenever the Tab LaunchPad is loaded.

The problem is related to how objects store their icons in OS/2. Normal objects store their icon information in the OS2.INI files. However, a shadow is only a reference to the original object, so every time the Workplace Shell has to look for that object's icon information, it has to go to the directory where that object resides and query the object to find out what it does. To stop this from happening, always make sure you place the original object in the Tab LaunchPad and not a shadow.

Creating WPS Objects using Object Navigator

One of the more annoying short comings of the Workplace Shell, in my opinion, has been its inability to easily create Workplace Shell objects from files on your hard drive. While it's fairly trivial to create shadows (hold down CTRL-SHIFT while dragging) and copies (hold down CTRL while dragging), creating an object requires the use of either "Create Another" or the Program Template, both of which require one step to create the object and another to set its parameters.

Object Navigator eliminates one step of this process by allowing you to create an object with the particulars for a program in one action.

To do this simply select the program or file you want to create the object for in the Navigator's main window. Once the program is selected click in the button on the Object Navigator button bar that looks like a template. This will bring up the "object creation dialog" which will ask you to name the object and where to place it. Fill out the information and you're done.

Clear the /tmp directory

Like many other OS/2 programs, Object Desktop uses the directory assigned for temporary storage (specified by the tmp variable in the config.sys) to temporarily store the decompressed files for object archives. If this directory becomes clogged (by a program such as WebExplorer that uses this directory for caching) the performance of Object Archives will suffer. To alleviate this, first check your config.sys to see what directory is set as temporary storage (look for the SET TMP= statement -- usually x:\tcpip\tmp where x: is your OS/2 boot drive) then delete all files from that directory.

That's it for this month. Next month we'll feature even more undocumented and useful tips and tricks for Object Desktop.


Alexander Antoniades is the former Associate Editor of OS/2 Magazine and the current Vice President of Marketing at Stardock Systems.

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