OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Applications

XWP v1.0.16

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Rich Walsh:
XWP v1.0.16 introduces some of the most significant Desktop usability improvements in years.

New Features

* Text Size
With two clicks and a reboot, you can now set the text in folders, menus, titlebars, notebooks, and most dialogs to a size you can read. Use the first page of the Desktop's Properties notebook to try it out. In Test Mode, changing the text size will cause the notebook to resize and redraw itself so you can see what that size looks like. No changes will be made to your system until shutdown, so you can undo this at any time before then.

Developed in conjunction with Alex Taylor, this feature relies on Alex's extended-size versions of 'System Proportional' and 'WarpSans'. The latest versions available will be installed by WarpIn if they appear to be newer than your current versions.

Note: Text Size itself only affects programs that are aware of it. These include system components like PM, the WPS, XWP, Dynamic Icons, and a few others. Use Alex's newly-released Styler v1.20 to extend its reach to 3rd-party dialogs that don't specify a text size.


* Large Icons in XCenter
XCenter's Properties notebook now gives you a choice of Large (full-size) or Mini (half-size) icons. The WinList widget extends this by letting you set its icon size separately from XCenter and by giving you the choice of text, icons, or both on its buttons.


* Low Battery Alert
The Battery widget now has a Properties page to set up the widget's new alert. Set the level at which a warning should pop up (e.g. at 15%), and optionally, set follow-up warnings whenever the level drops another specified percent (say, 5%).

Updates and Bugfixes

* XStartup
Large parts of the XStartup code have been rewritten for improved reliability. It should no longer be necessary to impose a long delay to ensure the first object starts properly. XStartup's notebook page has also been updated with XWP-Full's Boot Logo option getting its own page.


* XWP Help
A Table of Contents has been added to the XWP Help system to organize its many pages into 21 top-level topics. Expanding a topic displays all relevant pages with no further nesting. Also, features not included in XWP-Lite should no longer appear in its Help file.


* Other Changes


* XShutdown has been revised to invoke Text Size's shutdown processing when updates occur. Related code has been refactored.


* An undocumented setup string has been added to XFldDesktop to enable Styler and other shutdown utilities to invoke Text Size's shutdown processing when changes are pending.


* 'xwptrap.log' has been partially reformatted to make it less verbose.


* 'h2i.exe' which converts HTML help to .INF format has been revised to support an optional "Table of Contents" mode.


* 'xunlock.exe' has been added to the distro to ensure scripts always have access to an "unlock" utility. It returns 0 if the file is now unlocked and >0 if it remains locked or an error occured.


* A rewrite of the Window List widget should ensure that its last button doesn't paint over the widget to its right.


* Code to read the display's EDID has been added to support future Text Size enhancements.

Downloads

Until XWP's files have been cataloged, they should be available from /pub/incoming (the link for Styler v1.20 is already live).

* XWP v1.0.16 Full


* XWP v1.0.16 Lite


* Styler v1.20

Martin Iturbide:
Thanks a lot Rich.

I will try it further, for the moment I'm very happy that I can enlarge the icons size of the xcenter.

Regards

Martin Iturbide:

--- Quote from: Rich Walsh on November 06, 2023, 06:36:20 am ---Text Size
With two clicks and a reboot, you can now set the text in folders, menus, titlebars, notebooks, and most dialogs to a size you can read. Use the first page of the Desktop's Properties notebook to try it out. In Test Mode, changing the text size will cause the notebook to resize and redraw itself so you can see what that size looks like. No changes will be made to your system until shutdown, so you can undo this at any time before then.

Developed in conjunction with Alex Taylor, this feature relies on Alex's extended-size versions of 'System Proportional' and 'WarpSans'. The latest versions available will be installed by WarpIn if they appear to be newer than your current versions.

Note: Text Size itself only affects programs that are aware of it. These include system components like PM, the WPS, XWP, Dynamic Icons, and a few others. Use Alex's newly-released Styler v1.20 to extend its reach to 3rd-party dialogs that don't specify a text size.

[/li][/list]

--- End quote ---

It looks good and finally there is an easy way to change the text size in one shot.
Thanks a lot.

Regards

andreas:
had a problem to start the wps after installing (same on both of my AN-partitions).
wps didn't build up and collapsed again and again. Reboot + shift helped though (using older ini).

Rich Walsh:

--- Quote from: andreas on November 06, 2023, 03:32:48 pm ---had a problem to start the wps after installing (same on both of my AN-partitions).
wps didn't build up and collapsed again and again. Reboot + shift helped though (using older ini).

--- End quote ---

I'm sorry to hear you had problems with this. Are you now able to start up OK and get to the Desktop?

I know of one possible startup issue but it isn't something that could be fixed by reverting to an older INI. More likely, it would cause the system to hang (no one has reported the issue so far, so I really don't know what it looks like - hang/crash/just some beeps).

If anyone has a hang or crash at startup that can't be fixed by using an older INI, then it would be _really_ helpful if I could see the last few entries in 'x:\var\log\xwptrap.log'. If you can't boot the system normally, you can get to it by booting the AOS installer and using the System Management console. Or, you can use Alt-F1 at the boot blob to boot to a command line (under UEFI, select "Show Recovery Options" then continue - the following screen will offer "F2 - boot to command line").

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