Name : URLd Archive : urld112.zip MD5-checksum: 8160c630b52b0a27c3baaefdb36b42db Purpose : URI to URL converter and URL deferrer Version : 1.12 (31-07-2008) Status : Freeware Author : Frank de Bruijn Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are currently two types of calls to launch URLs: ANT's URL call (which uses wimp message &4AF80 and the Alias$URLOpen_ variables) and Acorn's URI call (&4E382 / Alias$Open_URI_). Applications that are up to date will respond to the latter, but of course Fresco knows nothing about them. This can be a Real Pain¨ sometimes... This little application attempts to alleviate that problem by converting URI calls to URL calls. Put it in your !Boot (Choices.Boot.Tasks or Choices.Users. Single.Boot.Tasks) or put it somewhere else and just run it when you think you need it. It won't show up anywhere except in the Task display, so you'll have to look there if you want to see whether it's running. That's the place to quit it as well. You don't have to reboot your computer to start using it. If the defaults are set up properly, it will reset the Alias$URLOpen_ variables when needed (see below). URLd should work with any version of RISC OS from 3.10 and has been tested on 4.29, 4.39, 5.13 and 6.10 (thanks Dave). Please let me know if it falls over when you use it with an older version of the OS. Defaults ~~~~~~~~ To keep URLd small, I haven't bothered with a graphical user interface. There are only very few things you can set up anyway. The file .Defaults contains lines like these: Run .!Run -URL %*0 file gopher http https This means that whenever a file, gopher, http or https URL is double clicked and there's nothing running to handle it, the variable Alias$URLOpen_ (where is one of the URL schemes mentioned) will be checked to see if it contains 'Run .!Run -URL %*0'. If it doesn't, it will be altered. Either way it will be executed to start Fresco and launch the URL. Defaults in a different way ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the example above, the path where Fresco can be found is specified as a variable. This is more flexible than specifying an actual path and you really should use this form. However, if you don't have RISC OS 'look at' the directory which contains Fresco at start up, the variable Fresco$Dir may not be set up and that could lead to errors. To avoid that, you can put the actual path in the Run line. Be warned that if you do that, things will go wrong if you decide to rearrange the applications on your hard drive and forget to modify Defaults... Defaults is only read when you start URLd, so if you change anything, you'll have to restart it. No need to quit it first though. It will remove any version of itself which is already running. No defaults ~~~~~~~~~~~ If you rename or delete Defaults, URLd won't try to grab any URI messages. This could be useful if you don't need the conversion, but just want URLd for it's other function... Deferrer ~~~~~~~~ URLd can also act as a 'URL deferrer' by storing URLs for later reference. If you double click a URL with a Ctrl key held down, URLd will beep and add the URL to a textfile called . By default this is .URLs, but you can change this by altering the appropriate line in the !Run file. Of course this will only work with URLs that are launched using Acorn's URI protocol, such as the ones in Pluto's Article Viewer. Press both Shift and Ctrl when you double click a URL, and will be Filer_Run, which means it should be opened by your favorite editor. AcornURI ~~~~~~~~ URLd needs AcornURI and will try to RMRun it when it notices (at start up) that it isn't there. It will look in System:Modules.Network for a file called URI and exit if it doesn't find it. A word of warning regarding the Defaults file ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you don't have Fresco and only use URLd because of the deferrer function, don't just comment out the first non comment line in the Defaults file, but either delete the file or rename it. Otherwise URLd could trigger inexplicable errors like 'Message block is too big or not a multiple of 4'. To do (not likely to happen, I'm afraid, as I no longer use Fresco...) ~~~~~ * Intercept URL calls early to be able to change them into URI calls. This may seem like a somewhat useless effort, but sometimes Fresco responds to &4AF80 messages when I don't want it to, e.g. when I want to FTP something with FTPc while Fresco is running and the &4AF80 message gets sent out first (yes, there are applications that do that...). The main code to handle this is already present and active, but as you need to start Fresco and URLd in a specific order to make sure URLd will see the message first, it doesn't work reliably. It needs proper filtering and thus a module. No more time for that at present... :-( * Optionally send deferred URLs to applications that understand the hotlist protocol. -------------------------- Version 1.00 (28-08-2002) First attempt. Not released. Version 1.10 (02-09-2002) Added URL deferrer. Changed the name to URLd. Version 1.11 (05-12-2004) Made it 32-bit clean (involved little more than removing a single ^ ...) Version 1.12 (31-07-2008) Added AIF header so RISC OS 6 doesn't complain. Added warning about the Defaults file to this file. ----------- 1307,260/FS Acorn URI Handler Functional Specification, issue 8. Elkins, Brodie, Bracey, Middleton, Laughton and Hodgkinson. 11-12-1997. inet_url InetSuite URL broadcast mechanism. Authors? Date?