Rememberopendrawers

RememberOpenDrawers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RememberOpenDrawers is a small collection of ARexx scripts which allow Workbench
to remember which windows you had open and reopen them on startup. It adds menu
items to the Tools menu which allow you to save the current list of open
windows, or to forget the list to start up the next time with no windows open.

I wrote the scripts to help me with my development of other programs - I find it
quite useful to have my documentation and project drawers open when I turn on
my computer.

It optionally supports snapshotting window sizes and positions, remembering
positions without snapshotting, and remembering persistently or forgetting each
time Workbench starts.


Requirements
~~~~~~~~~~~~
RememberOpenDrawers should run just fine on any OS4 setup.


Installation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Installation by hand is easy:

Copy ForgetOpenDrawers.rexx and SaveOpenDrawers.rexx to REXX:

If you have a WBStartup drawer (OS4.0 and early updates of 4.1), copy
RememberOpenDrawers.rexx there. If you have an up-to-date OS4.1 installation,
copy it to REXX: along with the other two scripts and add
RememberOpenDrawers.rexx to your WBStartup prefs.
 

Configuration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are a couple of options available for these scripts which you can change
by opening the scripts in a text editor. They are as follows:

- SaveOpenDrawers.rexx:

   snapshot_windows=0
This option allows the script to snapshot all open windows as it saves the list
to hard drive. It is the same as clicking on each open window in Workbench and
selecting the menu Window->Snapshot->Window on each one. This is disabled by
default as you might have some carefully resized windows you wouldn't like to be
changed. Enable it by setting it to 1.

- RememberOpenDrawers.rexx:

   remember_until_forgotten=1
When this option is enabled, the saved list of drawers is kept until you either
store a new set of open drawers, or use the menu option "Forget Open Drawers".
This will mean that the same windows will open every time Workbench starts.
Disable this by setting it to 0, which will cause the list to be erased once the
remembered windows have been opened on startup.

   remember_window_positions=0
This option is an alternative to the snapshot_windows option above. When this
setting is enabled (by setting it to 1), each window will be set to the size and
position it had when it was last "remembered". The advantage of this method is
that it does not interfere with your windows' snapshot positions, however it's
disabled by default because it's not particularly elegant to see in action: each
window is opened at its snapshot size and position, and then resized. It works
fine, but is a little clumsy to watch...

   add_tools_menuitems=1
This option tells the script to add the required entries to Workbench's Tools
menu for remembering and forgetting the drawer window positions. This should
normally be left enabled, but can be disabled if needed for certain
situations. Examples where this might be useful are if you want to add the menu
items manually (e.g. using THE), or wish to add the scripts as dockies, or run
them from other scripts. In these situations, you will still need
RememberOpenDrawers.rexx in your WBStartup, but you can run the
ForgetOpenDrawers.rexx and SaveOpenDrawers.rexx scripts from wherever you like.


Usage
~~~~~
Usage is easy, and if installed as described above, the next time you boot you
should have an extra menu item or two in the Tools menu. These are:

- Remember Open Drawers
This item will save a list of the currently open drawers to your hard drive,
overwriting any previously remembered list. It will only remember Workbench
drawer windows, not any applications you might have open...

- Forget Open Drawers
This item will only be available if you have enabled the persistent remembering
feature (see Configuration above). Selecting this wll clear the currently saved
list of open windows, so the next time the computer boots, no windows will be
opened.


History
~~~~~~~
1.1 (29.03.2014)
 - Added option to disable automatically adding items to Tools menu.
 - Included OS3.5/3.9 GlowIcons icon for the main script.
 - Fixed readme errors.

1.0 (18.02.2012)
First release. Works fine for me and thought others might find it useful too...