Customizing the BeOS

6 Customizing the BeOS

Several applications included with the BeOS allow you to customize the look and operation of your computer. This chapter shows you how to use each of these applications in the BeOS Preview Release, and how to add fonts, drivers, and system add-ons.

For information on adding printers to your system see "Adding a Printer" in Chapter 3, "Learning Be Application Basics."

This chapter discusses the following topics:


Section	Page
Using the Boot Application	page 144
Using Drive Setup	page 145
Understanding File Types	page 155
Using the Font Panel	page 160
Setting Keyboard Preferences	page 161
Using the Keymap Application	page 162
Setting Menu Preferences	page 163
Setting Mouse Preferences	page 165
Setting Network Preferences	page 165
Setting Screen and Workspace Preferences	page 166
Understanding Workspaces	page 168
Setting Scroll Bar Preferences	page 170
Selecting a Printer	page 171
Setting Sound Preferences	page 171
Setting Time Preferences	page 172
Setting Virtual Memory Preferences	page 173
Adding Fonts	page 173
Adding Add-Ons	page 174
Adding a Driver	page 174

Using the Boot Application

The Boot application is useful only if you have the BeOS installed on more than one disk connected to your computer. It lets you select the default SCSI or IDE device from which to launch the BeOS.

If you want to change the boot drive, launch the Boot application. A window appears that lists each mounted disk by name. You can change the boot preference to match the configuration of a mounted disk by clicking a name in the list. The current boot disk is marked with a bullet (·).

If you want more advanced options, click the Easy pop-up and select Expert. In Expert mode, you can use the pop-up menus to change the boot disk to any drive on the SCSI or IDE drive buses.

For SCSI disks, only the built-in SCSI bus is typically available, and unless you have a computer with more than one SCSI bus in it, leave the LUN (Logical Unit Number) at 0.

Using Drive Setup

WARNING: Use of the Drive Setup application can result in the loss of your data. Be careful using Drive setup and back up your data before proceeding.

You can mount and unmount volumes directly from the Tracker's Disks window's File menu. Mounting makes the contents of a disk available to the operating system; unmounting does the reverse. You should always unmount floppies and other removable media before ejecting them.

Disk Mounting Settings

The Tracker's Disks window's File menu also contains the Mount Settings dialog, which controls automatic mounting of disks and removable media, and lets you choose the disks you want to mount during the boot process.

Automatic Disk Mounting

Automatic Disk Mounting controls the mounting of disks inserted or attached after the machine has booted. It offers the following three options:

You can choose not to automatically mount any volume,

You can automatically mount only BeOS disks,

You can automatically mount all disks.

Disk Mounting During Boot

Disk mounting during boot controls the mounting of disks during the boot process. There are three options available:

You can choose to mount only the boot disk.

You can mount all BeOS disks or volumes,

You can mount any recognized disks or volumes.

Supported Drives

The Drive Setup application lets you work with any type of drive supported by the BeOS. In Drive Setup you can mount, unmount, format, partition, eject, and initialize disks connected to your computer.

Some important terms to remember:

A disk drive is a physical device; e.g., a SCSI hard drive.

You can partition a disk into multiple volumes.

A volume is a logical device. A single hard drive can have multiple logical volumes; e.g., one for the Mac OS and one for the BeOS.

Drive Setup Features

If you want to mount, unmount, format, partition, eject, or initialize disks connected to your computer, launch the Drive Setup application.

The Drive Setup application window shows you the drives currently installed in the system. In the window above you see there are four drives connected to the computer: a floppy drive, a hard drive, a CD-ROM, and a removable SCSI device. A small triangle appears next to partitioned drives with multiple volumes. Click on the triangle to see all of the volumes on the drive.

The table below identifies and describes the features of the Drive Setup application window:


Feature	Function
Device	This column lists the SCSI, IDE or floppy drive devices you can mount on this computer. These include floppy drive, hard drive, CD-ROM drive, and a removable SCSI device.
Map Style	This column identifies the partition map style. Currently the BeOS supports two styles: Apple and Intel. Developers may develop modules that extend this to support other partition map styles.
Partition Type	This column shows the specific partitions on a given volume. The BeOS recognizes Be, Macintosh HFS (Hierarchical File System), ISO 9660, and "ofs" (Old Be File System) partitions.
File System	This column shows the specific file system for each volume.
Volume Name	This column has the name for each volume on a drive.
Mounted At	This column shows the location of a volume.
Size	This column shows the size of each device and/or volume.

Mounting a Volume

Mounting simply means displaying a drive or volume in the Disks folder located on the Desktop. You can mount a drive or volume either via the Disks window's File menu or with Drive Setup.

To mount a volume with Drive Setup:

Launch Drive Setup.

Select the device you want to mount: e.g., floppy, CD, Zip drive, etc.

Select the Mount menu. You can also use the context-sensitive menus (click the right mouse button or press the Control-Command keys while clicking the mouse) to see the Mount menu as shown below:

You can choose to mount all volumes or a specific type of volume.

Unmounting a Volume

Unmounting means removing a drive or volume from the Disks folder display. To unmount a volume:

Launch Drive Setup.

Select the device you want to unmount:e.g., floppy, CD, Zip drive, etc.

Select the Unmount menu.

You can choose to mount all volumes or a specific volume.

Formatting a Disk

WARNING: Formatting a disk destroys all data on that disk! Back up any data on you want to keep before formatting the disk.

Formatting is a time consuming, low-level process. You should attempt to format a disk only after initialization has failed.

To format a disk:

Launch Drive Setup.

Select the disk you want to format, and unmount it if necessary.

Select Format from the Setup menu.

In the warning dialog that appears click Format if you still want to Format the disk.

Partitioning a Disk

WARNING: Partitioning a disk destroys all data on a disk! Back up data you want to keep before partitioning the disk.

You can use Drive Setup to create multiple partitions on a disk, except on floppy disks, which are too small to partition, and on read-only media like CD-ROMs. You might want to create a partition to allocate half of your hard drive to the BeOS and half to the MacOS.

To create a partition:

Launch Drive Setup.

Select the disk you want to initialize, and unmount it if necessary.

Select Partition from the Setup menu.

You can choose to create either an Apple- or Intel-style partition from a hierarchical menu. Make your choice based on the type of computer you are likely to share this drive with.

Creating Apple-Style Partitions

When you choose an Apple-style partition you have the option to enter each partition by hand or use one of the preset layout configurations.

You can choose one of the configurations in the Layout pop-up. You can alter the preset configurations by clicking on one of the preset partitions and then changing the name, type, or size.

To change the partition name or type enter the appropriate information in the corresponding text box.

WARNING: Use only one of the partition types in the pop-up menu or your partition will not be recognized by the BeOS or MacOS.

To change the partition size move the slider left to increase or right to decrease the size. If you change the size, you should click update to see the new sizes of all of the partitions.

You can also add or remove partitions with the Add and Remove buttons at the bottom of the window.

When you have the configured the partitions, click OK to partition the drive. A dialog warns that you may lose all the data on your disk; continue only if you are sure you want to erase all of the data on the disk.

Creating Intel-Style Partitions

When you choose an Intel-style partition you can have up to four partitions per disk.

You can choose one of the preset configurations by clicking the Layout pop-up menu. You can alter the type and size of the partitions. Drive Setup supports six different Intel partitions types via the pop-up menu next to the Type field. You typically use DOS Large or BeOS.

To change the partition name or type enter the appropriate information in the corresponding text box.

WARNING: Use only one of the partition types in the pop-up menu or your partition will not be recognized by the BeOS or by Intel-based operating systems such as Windows.

To change the partition size move the slider left to increase or right to decrease the size. If you change the size, you should click update to see the new sizes of all the partitions.

You can also add or remove partitions with the Add and Remove buttons at the bottom of the window.

Initializing a Disk

Initializing a disk prepares it to hold data in a certain file system format; e.g., Mac HFS, DOS, BeOS. You must initialize a new Be partition before you can write data to it.

To initialize your disk:

Launch Drive Setup.

Select the disk and volume you want to initialize, and unmount it if necessary.

Select Initialize from the Setup menu.

You have four initialization choices: Be File System, Mac HFS, ISO 9660, or the Old Be File System.

A dialog that lets you name the volume and determine the file system block size appears. The default size is 1024; this gives the best performance for most cases. If you are an expert and will have only a few very large files, you can increase the system block size.

Understanding File Types

The BeOS uses the Internet standard MIME as file types (descriptors). The file types determine how the system and Tracker deal with a file. For example, a files' file type determines which application opens that file when you double-click it. The BeOS lets you change the file type and associated application for a file as well as the associated application for a whole file type.

Changing the Type of a File

The primary way to change file type is via the File Type Tracker Add-On that is included with the system. To change a file type this way:

Select the file you want to associate with an application.

Click File and Select Add-Ons/FileType.

The File Type Add-On dialog that appears has two sections: the File type and the Preferred application.

In the File type section is the file's signature; this is the MIME type associated with the file. You have three options for choosing a file type:

Drag and drop a file of the type that you want the selected file to have onto the window.

Make the signature of this file the same as another file on your system by using the Same as button.

Make the signature of this file the same as those in the scrolling list of known types known to the system by using the Select button.

In the Preferred application section you can associate a particular application with the file signature you chose in three ways:

Drag and drop the application you want to associate with this file onto the window.

Make it the same as the application associated with another file via the Same as... button.

Select the particular application you want it associated with by using the Select button as shown below:

Changing a File Type

The File Type add-on works on individual files, while the File Type application operates on an entire type of file. In addition to changing the application associated with a particular file type, the File Type application also lets you add and remove MIME types, attributes, file extensions, and associated icons.

The top section in the application is a scrolling list of all of the file types known to your system. When new applications are installed, new file types unique to that application are added to the system and this list.

File types are broken into categories like application, audio, image, text, and video. The screen below shows the Person File type. While the system adds new types automatically when you launch new applications, you can also manually add and remove types from the list.

A particular file type is associated with an icon.

The Preferred application section is similar to the File Type add-on except that it establishes the preferred application for all files of a specific type.

The Extra Attributes section displays additional attributes that can be associated with a file type. In the screen above you see that the Person File Type has additional attributes associated with it: contact name, company, etc. You can add or delete attributes and the Tracker will display the updated list.

The File Extensions section displays file extensions that are commonly used on other platforms to identify file types. You can associate a suffix with a file type so it can be identified more easily when moved to other platforms.

File Type for an Application

Developers can use the File Type application to modify the behavior of their application. Because this is a developer function, we do not document it here.

Using the Font Panel

The Font Panel application lets you set standard system fonts and the size of the font caches. There are three types of default system fonts: plain, bold, and fixed-spaced fonts. You can choose the font, size, and style the system uses for each of these categories.

The Font Panel application works in conjunction with the Menu application (see "Setting Menu Preferences" in this chapter) to let you customize the look of applications and dialogs in the BeOS. The Font Panel lets you customize text within dialogs and applications.

To change these characteristics, choose a font, style, and size and click the Apply button.

Screen Font Cache Size determines how much RAM is allocated to hold font bitmaps. The larger the cache size the faster the screen redraws, but the less RAM is available for applications.

The Printing Font Cache Size determines how much RAM is allocated to printer fonts. The larger the cache size the faster the printing, but the less RAM is available for applications. You need a Printer Font Cache only if you print to HP LaserJet-compatible printers.

Setting Keyboard Preferences

When you press a key on the keyboard, a character appears on screen (or some other action takes place). If you hold down a key, the BeOS waits a moment and then acts as if you were repeatedly pressing that key. For example, if you press and hold down a character key when the insertion point is in a text field, a character appears in the field and then after a brief delay, more copies of that character appear. You can use the Keyboard application to increase or decrease the delay between first pressing a key an the key repeating, and to set a key's repeat rate.

Click Revert to restore the key-repeat settings that were in effect when you first started the Keyboard application. Click Defaults to restore the settings that were in effect when you first installed the BeOS.

Using the Keymap Application

The Keymap application opens a window that shows you the current keymap, that is, the character you see on-screen when you press each key. You can select a system keymap and type on the keyboard or click keys in the Keymap window to see the resulting character in the field at the top of the Keymap window If you press one or more modifier keys (such as Shift, Option, or Control) on the keyboard or click them in the Keymap window, the keycaps change to show you what characters are mapped to the keys when the modifier keys are pressed.

Different fonts map characters to different keys. You can choose a font from the Font menu to see that font's mapping in the Keymap window. This is also a useful way to look for characters you don't use very often, such as bullets, accents, or other special characters.

You can change the keymapping for your keyboard to support different languages or keyboard layouts. The BeOS comes with a number of preconfigured keymaps that you can choose from the scrolling System keymaps list. To customize a keymap or create your own:

Choose any user or system keymap.

Click File and Save As and enter the name of your new keymap.

Make sure the keymap is being saved to file:///boot/home/config/settings/keymap.

To make the keymap selected in the Keymap window active, click Use.

The new keymap is displayed in the User list. You can create a custom keymap by using the secondary mouse button to drag characters to the keys you want to map them to. You can also use the secondary mouse button to drag characters/glyphs not available on your keymap from FontDisplay.

Each keymap is made up of nine mapping tables that show what each key produces when you type it with no modifier key pressed, or with the Shift, Control, or Option key pressed, plus all the possible combinations of these keys.

If you use the tertiary mouse button to drag a character from one keycap to another, you actually drag all nine characters associated with that key in the nine tables in the keymap.

You can revert to the default keymap at any time by choosing one of the standard System keymaps.

Setting Menu Preferences

You can use the Menu preferences application to change the color and other aspects of the appearance of menus throughout the BeOS. You can also use Menu preferences to change how menus behave. When you start the Menu preferences application, a window opens with a set of controls that look like an open menu. You can choose items from this menu to customize the menus in the BeOS.

Choose a font from the Font menu and a font size from the Font Size menu that you want to use in menus. The menu in the Menu window changes right away to reflect your choices.

If you uncheck Click to Open, you can't open a menu or submenu by clicking its title -- you can only drag through menus.

If you check Always Show Triggers, triggers for menu titles, commands, and other menu items are always visible, even when you're dragging through menus, rather than just when you're navigating menus from the keyboard or clicking menus and submenus to open them.

Choose Color Scheme to open a color selection panel. When you click a color in the panel (if you're using 8-bit color) or drag one of the red, green, or blue color component sliders (if you're using 32-bit color), the Menu preferences window changes to show how the highlighting and other uses of color in menus will appear. (For more information about setting 8-bit and 32-bit color, see the "Setting Screen and Workspace Preferences" section in this chapter.)

You can choose one of three styles of menu item separators from the Separator Style submenu.

Click Revert to restore the Menu preferences settings that were in effect when you first started the Menu application. Click Defaults to restore the settings that were in effect when you first installed the BeOS.

Changes you make in the Menu preferences take effect in other applications the next time you start them (or in the case of the Tracker, the next time you start the BeOS).

Setting Mouse Preferences

Use the Mouse application to set preferences for the ways a mouse works with the BeOS. You can set whether you're using a one-, two-, or three-button mouse and which buttons you want to use as the primary, secondary, and tertiary mouse buttons (for more information on the role of the mouse and mouse buttons in the BeOS, see "Using the Mouse" in Chapter 2 "Learning BeOS Basics"). You can set how quickly you have to click the mouse button before the BeOS interprets two clicks as a double-click. You can also set how rapidly the cursor moves across the screen when you move the mouse.

When you start up the Mouse application, the Mouse window opens.

Note: If you have a single-button mouse, you can emulate a three-button mouse by pressing Control-Command while you click the mouse button to emulate the secondary mouse button, and by pressing Control-Option while you click to emulate the tertiary mouse button.

Setting Network Preferences

See Chapter 4,"Connecting Your BeOS System to the Internet" to learn how to set up networking on your computer.

Setting Screen and Workspace Preferences

You can use the Screen and Workspaces applications in tandem to define the configuration of your monitor. Initially, the BeOS works with the graphics card and monitor to display a screen resolution of 640 pixels horizontally and 480 pixels vertically. This display uses 8 bits of color data per pixel (also referred to as the screen depth), and has a refresh rate (the number of times per second the screen is redrawn) of 60.1 Hz. If you have a graphics card and monitor that can accommodate a higher resolution, more colors per pixel, or a faster refresh rate, you can change these settings in the Screen preferences panel.

For detailed information about what kinds of graphics cards work with the BeOS, see the Be web site (http://www.be.com).

When you start up the Screen application, the Screen window opens.

You change a setting by choosing from the pop-up lists, or by dragging the Refresh Rate slider, and clicking OK in the panel that asks you to confirm the change. You can also adjust the refresh rate by pressing the left or right arrow key on the keyboard -- this technique is useful to fine tune the best-looking refresh rate.

WARNING: You risk damaging the monitor and even starting a fire if you select a resolution, number of colors per pixel, or refresh rate the monitor isn't designed to support. Read the owner's guides that came with your monitor and graphics card to find out what combinations of settings are safe for the monitor.

If your graphics card or monitor can't support a setting you make, you may not be able to read anything on the screen -- but if you wait a few seconds, the screen reverts to the previous setting if you don't click OK.

You can uncheck Confirm Changes in Screen's main menu, so you don't have to click to confirm each setting change in a panel. If you do this and then change a setting that makes the screen unreadable, you can use keyboard shortcuts for commands in Screen's main menu to restore the default settings: Command-D for Default Resolution and Command-R for Default Refresh Rate. Or in a pinch, press Command-Control-Shift-F12 to restore all default settings except desktop color (this shortcut works at any time, even when Screen isn't running, though the default settings aren't saved unless Screen is running).

If you choose a very high resolution, a panel warns you that you risk damaging your monitor if it can't support that setting. If you're entirely certain that your graphics card and monitor can support any resolution, number of colors, or refresh rate you choose, you can uncheck Confirm High Resolution in Screen's main menu to circumvent these warnings, but be warned: This is a Be-tested way to destroy expensive monitors!

The changes you make to the resolution and number of colors affect only the active workspace, so if you're working with more than one workspace (as described in "Understanding Workspaces" in this chapter), you can set a different resolution and number of colors for each workspace.