This text is by Stuart Halliday.

Below is the offical Tips Help File.
But first here is a few tips of my own for use with RISC OS 4.


The Pattern file needs to have a line for every path you wish to alter.

eg:

ADFS::HardDisc4.$.*	F1

(btw, the line is not lettercase sensitive).

This means *everything* on your harddisc is sorted to show Small icons and
Sort by Name.

By altering the last digit '1' you can get it to alter the display options
automatically.


Basically the simplest way to use this program is to alter the last digit.

0 = Show Large Icons and Sort by Name.
1 = Show Small Icons and Sort by Name.
2 = Show Full Info and Sort by Name.

4 = Show Large Icons and Sort by Type.
5 = Show Small Icons and Sort by Type.
6 = Show Full Info and Sort by Type. 

8 = Show Large Icons and Sort by Size.
9 = Show Small Icons and Sort by Size.
A = Show Full Info and Sort by Size.

C = Show Large Icons and Sort by Date.
D = Show Small Icons and Sort by Date.
E = Show Full Info and Sort by Date.

So from the above a line of

*.Tempdir.*	FC

means all contents of a directory called TempDir will display it's contents as
'Show Large Icons and Sort by Date'.
 

Due to a limitation in the Filer in RISCOS 4 SmartOpenDir can't read what the
Filer is currently using and so can't just alter one Display option so you've
*got* to use the 'F' character in the line to tell SmartOpenDir to alter both
options.



If you've got RISCOS 4 the  *last* line in the Patterns file has to have your
preferred display options.

ie
*	F0
This is mine as I prefer seeing Large Icons and Sort by Name.

One last thing.

I've added a Reload Obey file. If you've altered the Patterns file, just double
click on this file to force SmartOpenDir to start using your newly altered
Patterns. (KILLIT will simply remove SmartOpenDir from your computers memory).

I hope this is of some help.
Stuart Halliday.

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Read the application's Help file first, then read this if you need more help
to figure out how to create a patterns file. You'll find it helpful to refer
to the Help file's tables of values alongside this text.

Here are some examples, mainly from my own Patterns file.

*.h				31
*.c				31
C source directories tend to contain a large number of files all of text
type, so the filetype icon isn't important, and a small icons display is more
useful to fit more on screen at once or take up less room on the desktop. To
set small icons we mask out the display options with 3 and set the value with
1. (I have several more lines like this for different types of source).

*.WordProc.Letters		CC
For letters you're likely to want to sort them by date. The sort options
are a little more complicated. C for the mask is easy to work out from
the table in the !Help file, but for the value we want to write 3 into bits
2-3, so shifting 3 left by 2 bits works out as C (the number in brackets).

*.!NewsDir.newsbase.debug%.*	FD
A certain set of directories used by Newsbase (the debug% can expand to
debugmail or debugnews in this case) contain lots of files where the
time/date is much more important than the name, so I have these sorted
by date and displayed as small icons. The mask to affect both types of
option is F, and we need to boolean OR (or add) the sort by date value
(C) with the small icons value (1), giving D.

*				1180031
You could have this at the bottom of a Patterns file to catch anything that
doesn't match any of the previous patterns in the file. It's an extended
option. The first digit 1 means use one set of options if there are fewer or
equal than a certain number of files in the directory, and another if there
are more than this number. That number is read from the next two digits in
hexadecimal, in this case &18 = 24. The next two digits are the options to
use for a low number of files, in this case 00 means no change from the
machine's configured options. The last two digits are the options to use for
a large number of files, in this case 31: use small icons.

*				310180031
Building on the previous example, this additionally checks the lengths of
filenames in the directory. If any files have more than 16 characters (&10 in
hex), or there are more than 24 files, it's set to small icons. If neither of
those conditions are true the options are left alone.

If using with RISC OS 4 you will need a final line that matches any filename
to ensure that directories not matching previous patterns are opened
consistently. If you do not want any of the extended options consider
something like:

*				F0

to use the factory defaults.
