[Tool] Atari ST Harddisk menu

[daeghnao]

My mind jumps out to wild ideas like Panopal, Choctel, or HDSalon, but as you say, that distracts somewhat from the core concept. My aim here is really to make sure we explored some ideas that might influence the visuals before I do anything super detailed.

[Mikerochip]

Howdy!

I've been using this all day, and it's excellent!

But, to mention what another user said, it would be nice to be able to select games using the joystick, and fire button, rather than using the keyboard.

Or, really fancy, would be mouse support. Just to move up and down the list, rather than implement a mouse pointer. Sort of like using it as an up/down spinner!

Also, another suggestion or two:
1) a page up, and page down. It's really handy that individual keys work, but, I've almost two hundred games beginning with S, so, a page up/down would be handy!
2) Maybe some statistics? Like, x number of games in the list, etc. You could fade out/swap out the copyright line, and show the program version number, the games list count, maybe the time? If it's after 199x
3) It's a very small thing, but, if the black selection bar, could start 1 row of pixels before the first letter, it would make it a lot easier to read the first letter of each game.
4) Increase the list to 2500? or 3000? Atm I've about 2,500 entries!
5) there's probably enough room for another line of text, if you move the first line up by a pixel or two, and add another line at the bottom!

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Glad you are finding the menu handy.

Have you tried typing more than just a first letter? The menu has real-time searching. For example typing the letters s..t..r..i..d.. will jump to the entry for Strider, etc. You can type as many letters or as few as you wish and it will find the best match.

Pagewise menu movement is already present. Just hold Shift-then press Cursor up or down.

From the manual:

Code: Select all

- Cursor Up/Down to select entries
- Shift + Cursor Up/Down for pagewise navigation
- ClrHome to go to top of the list
- Shift + ClrHome to go to the bottom of the list

All the suggestions from this thread are under consideration and joystick control of the menu is one addtion I think would be helpful.

[Mikerochip]

Glad you are finding the menu handy.

Have you tried typing more than just a first letter? The menu has real-time searching. For example typing the letters s..t..r..i..d.. will jump to the entry for Strider, etc. You can type as many letters or as few as you wish and it will find the best match.

Pagewise menu movement is already present. Just hold Shift-then press Cursor up or down.

From the manual:

Code: Select all

- Cursor Up/Down to select entries
- Shift + Cursor Up/Down for pagewise navigation
- ClrHome to go to top of the list
- Shift + ClrHome to go to the bottom of the list

All the suggestions from this thread are under consideration and joystick control of the menu is one addtion I think would be helpful.

Ah! Thanks. Yeah, I had noticed more than the first letter was doing something, but, only the first 25% of my list so far, is sorted, (All the dbug and klaz, and PP A+B) but, I couldn't work out exactly what it was doing. (Sometimes, it never did anything, unless I switched away to a new entry, then typed again. Is there a time limit to when it 'finishes' with one entry/set of keystrokes, and starts searching for the next?)

Excellent, I hadn't noticed the page up/down was working.

I'm still filling in the entries for game names and such, and just testing out some of my favourites, as I'm going along.

Also, the main menu graphic, would be nice if it was user replaceable!
It's actually quite nice! But my own logo would be nicer

Now, I just need some way to convert .png files to .neo

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Ah! Thanks. Yeah, I had noticed more than the first letter was doing something, but, only the first 25% of my list so far, is sorted, (All the dbug and klaz, and PP A+B) but, I couldn't work out exactly what it was doing. (Sometimes, it never did anything, unless I switched away to a new entry, then typed again. Is there a time limit to when it 'finishes' with one entry/set of keystrokes, and starts searching for the next?)

Yes, there is a time limit between keypresses for the search. So if another key in the search is not pressed, it will reset so that a new search can begin. The searching will work best if your CSV file is in alphabetical order of course.

Also, the main menu graphic, would be nice if it was user replaceable!
It's actually quite nice! But my own logo would be nicer

Well, allowing that that is up to simonsunnyboy. I know new menu graphics are being worked on, but not sure if he wants it user-replaceable, I would prefer it that way, but I'll let him speak on it.

Now, I just need some way to convert .png files to .neo

If you're using linux, "pngtoppm" and "ppmtoneo" works. Here is the simple script I use to convert to NEO using them:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z "$1" ];then
	echo "usage: convert_png_to_neo <image file>"
	exit
fi

image=$1

if [ -f $image ];then

	name=`basename $image .PNG`

	if [ ! -z $name ];then

		cat "$name".PNG | pngtopnm | pnmquant 16 | ppmtoneo > TMP.NEO
		`head -c36 TMP.NEO > $name.NEO`
		`cat HEADER.BIN >> $name.NEO`
		`tail -c+37 TMP.NEO >> $name.NEO`

		rm TMP.NEO
	else
		echo "image not png"
		exit
	fi
else
	echo "image not found"
	exit
fi

exit

ppmtonoeo has a bug though and doesn't make the header in the NEO file that HDmenu needs, so that is why the script above stuffs it in.

Here is the HEADER.BIN file I use:

HEADER.BIN.zip

[Mikerochip]

Thanks!
I'm (mostly) a windows user, but, I'll give it a shot!

[simonsunnyboy]

No, graphics will not be user replacable. The graphics is part of the product and under rework at this moment.
We do not support skinnable 00s gizmos.

[Mikerochip]

No, graphics will not be user replacable. The graphics is part of the product and under rework at this moment.
We do not support skinnable 00s gizmos.

But, Winamp was *so* cool with skins
j/k

Mostly, it's the list count, and the moving around the text lines are more important, I think.
The extra line of pixels to the left of the first letter make it a lot easier to read, since the letter doesn't blend into the background.
Moving the list box area on-screen would be handy, for an extra text line, but not really required.
More of a nice to have.
Same with the statistics/info line.

Mostly though, thanks! It's an excellent program, and works really well

[TheNameOfTheGame]

It would be nice if the new (left / right) keyboard shortcuts were documented on the HDMENU help page, and if one could scroll and select programs also by using joystick.

Optional joystick navigation has now been added for Joystick port 1. Those wishing to test out the feature, please send a pm.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

I am trying the new version and it is really nice. But what I am missing is some way to exit to desktop. F10 do reset it is fine but some nice quit to desk would be nice.

What exactly was your use case for requesting the feature?

I would like to use it for testing how the menu looks like during constructing the csv database.

Test version has added the ability to reload the database from within the menu with F8. This is useful for editing and testing the CSV i.e. under an emulator.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

...

3) It's a very small thing, but, if the black selection bar, could start 1 row of pixels before the first letter, it would make it a lot easier to read the first letter of each game.

The original selection bar routine works on 16 pixels at a time, so backing it up 1 position actually moves the bar back 16 pixels so it overwrites the left side of the menu frame. The routine can be adjusted but haven't done it atm.

...

5) there's probably enough room for another line of text, if you move the first line up by a pixel or two, and add another line at the bottom!

Yes, the screen does have room for another line of text, so increased the visible lines by 1. Thanks for the suggestion.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

...

3) It's a very small thing, but, if the black selection bar, could start 1 row of pixels before the first letter, it would make it a lot easier to read the first letter of each game.

The original selection bar routine works on 16 pixels at a time, so backing it up 1 position actually moves the bar back 16 pixels so it overwrites the left side of the menu frame. The routine can be adjusted but haven't done it atm.

Adjusted the routine to move the highlighted selection bar start back 8 pixels. New executable sent via PM. Hopefully that works better for you.

[Mikerochip]

I've dropped my micro ATX ST case ... and now, IDE writes don't work.

Well. They corrupt the CF card.

*sigh*

I'll test once I investigate

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Recent test version improvments.

Optional background music can be played from within the menu. Based on SNDH routines from stlibs4gcc.

Static arrays have been removed for run-time memory allocation of data structures. Menu will run on even a 512K machine now depending on size of database. Number of entries now only limited by available RAM.

Real-time search is improved. Should work bettter on unsorted lists.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Some test version updates.

Menu list/text file viewer scrolling speed increased

Keyboard/Joystick handling improved.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Test version updated.

Menu now has configurable screen saver function using modified sprite routine from stlibs4gcc.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Test version now has the option to automatically sort the list alphabetically. Useful if the CSV file is unsorted.

Currently, to sort the list, the user has to enter the conguration screen F2 and turn the sorting on as the default is set to off. This option is saved in the user's config file so that on subsequent runs, the list will sort automatically after it is loaded.

But, is that step even needed? The sorting uses a MergeSort on Linked List so is pretty fast.

Can anyone see a reason to not just have the program sort the database list everytime as default without a specific setting to do so? Would there be a case to leave a list unsorted?

[Eero Tamminen]

E.g. jumping to first entry starting with a pressed key works much more nicely when list is sorted...

Only use-cases for unsorted list that I can think of would be:

• User lists favorites first. But you could add option to mark favorites (in game list) and key to toggle sorting favorites first?
• Straight alphabetical sort does not result games being sorted by relevant part of the name. E.g. when half of the names start with "The". In that case user should just remove the offending prefixes though

[TheNameOfTheGame]

E.g. jumping to first entry starting with a pressed key works much more nicely when list is sorted...

Yes, exactly. Also, real-time searching with multiple letters. Although both have been improved to work better with unsorted lists.

Only use-cases for unsorted list that I can think of would be:

• User lists favorites first. But you could add option to mark favorites (in game list) and key to toggle sorting favorites first?
• Straight alphabetical sort does not result games being sorted by relevant part of the name. E.g. when half of the names start with "The". In that case user should just remove the offending prefixes though

Favorites list is being worked on now. Testers have the initial implementation to try out the mechanism and "feel". It's one of the most requested features which will be very helpful for those with large lists. One tester has 3000+ games in their list!

Yes, well, most of the time the solution there is to put the "The" part after the name such as "Addams Family, The" instead of "The Addams Family" but is a matter of taste.

[Eero Tamminen]

Another option would be (e.g. popup) search box where you can type whole string, and it would search that from all of game names content, not just from start of the names.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Yes, ssb put that method of searching in from his original release. Just press F3 and you can type a string to search for. F4 will repeat the search.

So the program has the F3/F4 searching and my addition that I call "real-time" searching where the user can simply type a number of characters at the menu list and the list will be searched and updated accordingly.

F3/F4 searching uses "StrStr" so it will match any substring inside a game's title.

The real-time searching uses "StrPart" and matches the start of a title.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Also new addition for next release - when choosing a save state to load, the internal screen memory of the save state will be displayed. The is useful to know where the game was actually stopped at for the state save i.e. to see what level the game was saved at, etc.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Howdy!

I've been using this all day, and it's excellent!

Also, another suggestion or two:
...
2) Maybe some statistics? Like, x number of games in the list, etc. You could fade out/swap out the copyright line, and show the program version number, the games list count, maybe the time? If it's after 199x
...

Optional status line display added. I think that's the last of your requests .

Also, program now autosorts list automatically after database loads. Additional change - confirmation screen added for "Reload Database" option.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Updates to the test version.

Menu now supports "Categories". Each game can optionally be assigned to a user-defined category. From the main list, users can select a category to view and the list will then only display games of the requested category.

Alternate-exec files can now be launched. LeftShift-Enter will bring up a list of executables in the game directory and the user can select which one to launch. This is useful for Ppera's hard drive adaptations as many have more than one executable for different reasons; memory, DMA sound, blitter usage, etc.

After reflection, autosort has been removed in favor of now having the sort function on the F8 key. This gives the user the decision making on whether to sort their list or not. Sorted lists can be saved back to the database file.

Shift-F10 now exits the menu.

This completes the feature updates to the menu that I wanted to implement. Hopfully with testing we can move towards a new release.

[Kroll]

Updates to the test version.

Menu now supports "Categories". Each game can optionally be assigned to a user-defined category. From the main list, users can select a category to view and the list will then only display games of the requested category.

fantastic, can these categories also be used to load games, demos and, in the case of Falcon with 060, also demos on 060 if of course this program works on 060?

Alternate-exec files can now be launched. LeftShift-Enter will bring up a list of executables in the game directory and the user can select which one to launch. This is useful for Ppera's hard drive adaptations as many have more than one executable for different reasons; memory, DMA sound, blitter usage, etc.

After reflection, autosort has been removed in favor of now having the sort function on the F8 key. This give the user the decision making on whether to sort their list or not. Sorted lists can be saved back to the database file.

Shift-F10 now exits the menu.

This completes the feature updates to the menu that I wanted to implement. Hopfully with testing we can move towards a new release.

If you want, I can test the newest version on my hardware, STE/TT/F030/060 , when available ?