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Requesters

Requesters are prompts that appear in small windows. You must respond to a requester to continue. A requester always contains text explaining what you must do to satisfy the request. Menu items that generate requesters are followed by an ellipses (...).

Action Requesters

Action requesters require you to proceed with or cancel an operation by clicking on the appropriate action gadget: OK, Continue, Retry, or Cancel. Figure 3-4 illustrates an action requester window.

Figure 3-4.

Action Requester

Keyboard shortcut: To proceed (OK, Continue, or Retry), press left Amiga+V. To Cancel, press left Amiga+B.

Message Requesters

Message requesters inform you about something that occurred in the system or a program. They require an acknowledgement by clicking on a gadget.

Text Requester

Text requesters ask you to enter text into a text gadget, as illustrated in Figure 3-5. The text gadget is automatically selected and text is entered at the cursor position (the small highlighted box inside the text gadget).

Figure 3-5.

Text Requester

File Requesters

File requesters allow you to select or enter the name of a file that you want to open or save. Figure 3-6 illustrates a file requester window.

Figure 3-6.

File Requester

A file requester contains a scrolling list of files and drawers, plus several other gadgets for locating your file. Read through the list by dragging the scroll bar up or down or selecting the scroll arrows. If your file is in a different drawer or on another disk, the gadgets in the requester allow you to look for that file.

The gadgets are used as follows:

Volumes

Displays a list of available floppy disks, hard disk partitions, and assigned directories. List the available files and drawers on a disk by clicking on the name. Click on the drawer names to list their contents. In addition to volume, drawer, and file names, the scrolling list displays the file size in bytes, file and drawer timestamps, and volume use statistics. Use the sizing gadget to make the file requester wider for viewing this information.

Parent

Lists the current drawer's parent. Selecting Parent when the current drawer is the root of a particular volume is the same as selecting the Volumes gadget.

OK

Loads/saves the selected file. Same as pressing Return. In a Load or Open requester, the shortcut is to double-click on the file name. In a Save requester, distinguished by the reversed colors on its scrolling list, you cannot save by double-clicking. This gadget can be labeled OK, Load, or Save.

Cancel

Cancels the requester.

Pattern

An optional text gadget labeled Pattern, when present, allows use of AmigaDOS pattern matching to control the list of files. Users familiar with AmigaDOS pattern matching can enter their own pattern statements.

The standard Amiga file requester has a Control menu with the following items:

Last Name/Next Name

Moves up and down through the listed names. (The up and down arrow keys or the right Amiga key shortcuts in the menu can also move you through the list.) The current name appears in the File text gadget; a highlighted bar appears in the list if the current name is a file name.

Restore

Recalls the scrolling list and text gadget contents that were displayed when the requester opened.

Parent

Has the same function as the Parent gadget.

Volumes

Has the same function as the Volumes gadget.

OK

Has the same function as the OK gadget.

Cancel

Has the same function as the Cancel gadget.

Delete

Deletes files from the file requester. Select the file name or type the name into the File text gadget and choose Delete. A requester appears, requiring confirmation. Select OK to delete or Cancel to return to the file requester without deleting.

Because the file requester window is an AppWindow, you can also choose a file by dragging its icon into the window. The contents of the drawer containing the icon are listed with the file's path loaded into the Drawer and File gadgets.

Font Requesters

Font requesters list the available fonts on the system. Figure 3-7 illustrates the font requester window.

Figure 3-7.

Font Requester

Fonts are sets of characters of the same design. Using font requesters, applications allow you to choose the font style and point size. Some applications might also allow you to select font attributes (plain, bold, italicized, or underlined) and colors for the text and/or background. The display box above the OK and Cancel gadgets shows an example of text in the selected font. Use the requester's sizing gadget to widen the requester to show more characters.

When you select a font name, the display box shows that font in the currently selected font size, scaling the font as necessary. Depending on whether the font is an outline font or a bitmap font, there can be a delay in displaying the font. Some bitmap fonts sizes may appear distorted.

For more information about fonts, see Chapter 8.

Volumes	Displays a list of available floppy disks, hard disk partitions, and assigned directories. List the available files and drawers on a disk by clicking on the name. Click on the drawer names to list their contents. In addition to volume, drawer, and file names, the scrolling list displays the file size in bytes, file and drawer timestamps, and volume use statistics. Use the sizing gadget to make the file requester wider for viewing this information.
Parent	Lists the current drawer's parent. Selecting Parent when the current drawer is the root of a particular volume is the same as selecting the Volumes gadget.
OK	Loads/saves the selected file. Same as pressing Return. In a Load or Open requester, the shortcut is to double-click on the file name. In a Save requester, distinguished by the reversed colors on its scrolling list, you cannot save by double-clicking. This gadget can be labeled OK, Load, or Save.
Cancel	Cancels the requester.
Pattern	An optional text gadget labeled Pattern, when present, allows use of AmigaDOS pattern matching to control the list of files. Users familiar with AmigaDOS pattern matching can enter their own pattern statements.

Last Name/Next Name	Moves up and down through the listed names. (The up and down arrow keys or the right Amiga key shortcuts in the menu can also move you through the list.) The current name appears in the File text gadget; a highlighted bar appears in the list if the current name is a file name.
Restore	Recalls the scrolling list and text gadget contents that were displayed when the requester opened.
Parent	Has the same function as the Parent gadget.
Volumes	Has the same function as the Volumes gadget.
OK	Has the same function as the OK gadget.
Cancel	Has the same function as the Cancel gadget.
Delete	Deletes files from the file requester. Select the file name or type the name into the File text gadget and choose Delete. A requester appears, requiring confirmation. Select OK to delete or Cancel to return to the file requester without deleting.