10 Habits Of Highly Successful Warp Users







by John McDonald

In Stephen Covey's book, 10 Habits of Highly Successful People he outlines ten basic habits that can make you productive, happy and successful in your life. Below are 10 habits of highly successful Warp users: ideas you should make sure you are familiar with so you can be productive, happy and successful with your Warp system.

Use Templates. Grossly underused but one of the most powerful and central features of the Workplace Shell is the idea of Templates. Templates function like sticky pads: you pull one note off the top of the pad, and the rest of the pad stays behind to provide more identical notes. Inside OS/2's Templates folder you will find templates for commonly used objects, including folders and data files, as well as some not-so-likely items, like templates for creating new Shredders. Most OS/2 applications will also create template files automatically: for example, to create a new Ami Pro for OS/2 document, you simply drag out a template into a folder or onto the desktop, name the file, and double-click it to edit. Now, you always know where your file is - right where you placed it. A little-known but highly useful detail is that most documents can be turned into templates simply by checking the Template check box in the File tab of the file's settings notebook. In this way you might create a folder full of sales letters, thank-you letters and so on, and pull off copies as needed.

Use Work Area Folders. On the File tab in the settings notebook for a folder resides probably the least used feature of the Workplace shell: The Work Area setting. If you create a work area folder, shadows of programs and data files placed in this folder will open together when you open the folder, minimize together when you minimize the folder, and close together when you close the folder. In this way you can group data files and programs you use for a task together in a folder, and with one click launch and close all of them as a group.

Change your Startup line in CONFIG.SYS. By default, when OS/2 boots it restarts all programs that were open when the system was shutdown. By adding the line SET RESTARTOBJECTS=STARTUPFOLDERSONLY. the system will only restart objects in your Startup folder. If you add SET RESTARTOBJECTS=STARTUPFOLDERSONLY,REBOOTONLY the system will restart objects in the startup folder only upon the initial startup of OS/2. If the system has to restart the Workplace Shell while the system is operating, to correct an error, for example, your system will not automatically re-launch items in your startup folder. You can prohibit items in your Startup folder from launching at all on reboot by holding down Shift-Control-F1 during the startup of the Workplace Shell.

Add items to your desktop popup menu. Frequently-used programs and utilities like the OS/2 System Editor or an OS/2 Command Prompt should be added to your desktop right-mouse popup menu for quick-and-easy access. Just open the settings notebook for the desktop, select the Menu tab, and add a new menu to the top listing of menus. Then you can drag and drop icons for programs you would like to add to the menu into the bottom list box.

Setup Associations. By default, many of the data file types are associated correctly with their OS/2 editors - for example, text files are associated with the OS/2 system editor. However, as you add and change programs on your system, these associations can get out of whack - especially when it comes to Windows applications. By changing the settings under the Associations tab of an object, you can associate that object with a particular application, or associate a program object automatically with a certain type of file or extension name. For example, to associate all PageMaker for Windows files with a ".PM5" extension with PageMaker, you can add "*.PM5" as an extension under the Associations tab of the Settings notebook for Pagemaker. Now, any PM5 document you double-click will automatically launch PageMaker for Windows. You can also associate data files with multiple applications, also in the Associations tab for the data file itself. In this way, you might associate a program's source code with both a text editor and a compiler, and with one right-click, open the data file in either program.

Hide your Windows. Often OS/2 users will set their windows to minimize to the desktop, creating small, square windows all over the screen. However, if you run more than a few applications at once, you can quickly cover up and mask your desktop, making your system cluttered and harder to use. Successful Warp users set their windows to hide when they minimize them. You can do this by opening the System Settings folder, selecting the System icon, flipping to the Window tab, and selecting the Hide Window option. Now, when you minimize a window, it disappears from your screen. You can quickly see all of your minimized windows by clicking both mouse buttons together on the desktop, and up will pop a list of all running programs, including minimized ones. You can right-click on the names of the programs in the Window list to close, restore and change settings of hidden windows.

Use the START command. Command-line junkies have long known about the power of the START command in an OS/2 command line window. Start allows you to launch OS/2 programs from the command line, but gives you tremendous control over the results. The basic syntax is simple: START "Name" Program Where Program is the path and filename of the program to run and "Name" is an optional title that will appear in the Window List. Here are some of the things you can do:
 * /N will start a program directly without launching a new command-processor
 * /C will start a program in a new command-processor window, and close it automatically when the program is complete
 * /K works the same as /C but will keep the new command-processor window open
 * /B will start a program in the background, and
 * /F will start it in the foreground
 * /FS will start a program in a full-screen window, and
 * /WIN will start it not-full-screen (in a window)
 * /DOS will start a program in a DOS window

Learn REXX. That is all we will say about that. REXX is an extremely powerful batch language built into OS/2, which can accomplish nearly any task in OS/2. There are several great books out on REXX, and the popular OS/2 Warp Unleashed by Sams Publishing has a great chapter on getting started.

Sort your PATH and LIBPATH. PATH and LIBPATH are two statements in your CONFIG.SYS file showing OS/2 where to look for program modules it cannot find in your current directory. PATH holds references to actual EXE and COM programs, and LIBPATH is primarily for DLL files. OS/2 will look through the contents of each directory in order until it finds the file. You can dramatically improve your system's performance by simply sorting the references in each line in order of most-used to least used. That way, when OS/2 is executing your most commonly-used applications, it won't have to root through directory after directory of little-used programs just to find the reference it needs. Use Shadows liberally. This seems obvious, since OS/2 relies on the concept of Shadowed objects so much, but this is a very under-utilized feature of OS/2. How about creating folders on your desktop for each project you are working on, and make shadows to the data files and programs used in completing the project in the folder? That way all of your work is in one place, and you don't have to go hunting for that application icon or data file all over your system. Or, how about creating a subset of your drives folder on your desktop, containing frequently used network drives and paths. Or how about a scaled-down Templates folder with only your most commonly-used templates inside? The possibilities are endless!

Many Warp users have been using some or all of these steps for years. Why don't you give them a try?