Need help with uLaunch

[ScoobyDoo]

Hello,I have made a Pack with Apps,Emus,GameLoader and Minigames launchable with uLaunch.Every Category have it´s Background and uLaunch.CFG.I can switch through the CFG´s.All´s working great.

Now my "Problem":
I have made 4 different "Themes" for that Pack.All with other Backgrounds and CFG´s.Is it possible to switch the "Themes" with uLaunch??

[dlanor]

Hello,I have made a Pack with Apps,Emus,GameLoader and Minigames launchable with uLaunch.

That's funny, because I am not familiar with any application by that name.

Here we deal only with an application named "uLaunchELF" or also called "LaunchELF" like its predecessor, and with the official abbreviation "uLE".

Use the full official name or the official abbreviation !
I am sick and tired of every new poster inventing their own names for the project.

Every Category have it´s Background and uLaunch.CFG.

Are you even halfway serious about wanting any help ?

Always use the correct filenames and other terms in describing any problem to anyone.
In the case of uLE there is no such file as "uLaunch.CFG" the proper name of the main config file is "LAUNCHELF.CNF" and nothing else, with "LAUNCHELF1.CNF" etc for additional configuration 'pages'.

Some other projects do use "CFG" file extensions, but uLE does not.

I can switch through the CFG´s.All´s working great.

Which means that you must be using CNFs, not CFGs, despite what you say here.

Now my "Problem":
I have made 4 different "Themes" for that Pack.All with other Backgrounds and CFG´s.Is it possible to switch the "Themes" with uLaunch??

Almost everything, including the background picture, is individual per configuration 'page', and you should also be able to use separate skin CNF files for use with the "Load Skin CNF..." command if the "Screen Settings..." submenu in configuring each page. But the effects of doing that may of course vary depending on what your configurations contain.

Like I said, each page can have separate background picture, and they can also have separate language and font settings, but some things are naturally unique to the main config file, such as some startup settings etc. But most things that affect the appearance and usage of the main menu are completely separate for each configuration 'page'.

You'll just have to experiment to find out how best to use the available features.

Edit: I decided to add some more details you (or others reading this) may have missed.

The key to using multiple CNF files lies in setting the entry "Number of CNF's:" in the "Startup Settings..." submenu to a value equal to the number of configuration pages you want. This is what modifies the main menu by adding the button commands "LEFT" and "RIGHT" for easy switching between CNF pages.

The main page is always named "LAUNCHELF.CNF", so this is what you have even in default state, with "Number of CNF's: 1"
A second page is always named "LAUNCHELF1.CNF", and is usable with "Number of CNF's: 2" or higher.
A third page is always named "LAUNCHELF2.CNF", usable with "Number of CNF's: 3" or higher.
And so on until you've reached "LAUNCHELF9.CNF", for a setup with ten pages.

Note that the "Number of CNF's:" entry is one of those read only at startup of the program, and thus ignored in extra pages. After increasing this number in the main page, and saving that change to "LAUNCHELF.CNF", you will need to restart the program in order for that new setting to take effect.

Once the new setting has taken effect you can use the RIGHT/LEFT commands to step between pages, and use the normal configuration menus to set each of them up separately. But you may also prefer to take already existing configuration files and rename their "LAUNCHELF.CNF" files as needed to work with a multipage setup. Just remember that the main page, the one still named "LAUNCHELF.CNF" in the final setup, must have the correct "Number of CNF's:" value to allow access to the other pages (renamed as described in a paragraph above).

Best regards: dlanor

[ScoobyDoo]

Sorry for the wrong name of the great uLaunchELF.

That is my working uLaunch.ELF 4.42a with 5 .CNF´s
LAUNCHELF.CNF,LAUNCHELF1.CNF,LAUNCHELF2.CNF,LAUNCH ELF3.CNF and LAUNCHELF4.CNF.
Every LAUNCHELF.CNF has its own Background in one "Style" (C64 Style)


How I said,all´s working great.
Now I have made some other "Styles" for the same Pack.


No I have 4 Folder ( 1 Folder for one Style) with the ULAUNCHELF.CNF´s and Backgrounds in it.

Almost everything, including the background picture, is individual per configuration 'page', and you should also be able to use separate skin CNF files for use with the "Load Skin CNF..." command if the "Screen Settings..." submenu in configuring each page. But the effects of doing that may of course vary depending on what your configurations contain.

Is that the "Key" for my Problem?Can I switch with this option (Load Skin CNF...) through my 4 Folders/Styles?

[dlanor]

@ScoobyDoo:
I still don't clearly understand what your 'problem' is...

In one part of your text you say that "all's working great". (Thus no problem exists.)
Then later in the text you refer to the '"Key" for my Problem', whatever that may be.

You have never clearly stated what your problem is, so I have to go by guesswork here.

If you mean that you want a single command to swap between different multi-page uLE themes, then that is strictly impossible to do, since uLE themes are based on having "LAUNCHELF.CNF" as page 0 of a theme, "LAUNCHELF1.CNF" as page 1, etc, and there is no single command which can by magic replace such a set of multiple page files by another such set. Theoretically I could recode uLE to allow alternate CNF filenames, but I see little reason to do so, when only one person seems to want it.

But you can achieve almost the same effect by having alternate uLE folders for each theme.

By default uLE will look for CNF files in "mc0:/SYS-CONF/", but first it will look for them in its own boot folder, and use these is found there (ignoring "SYS-CONF"). So if you have several folders with uLE elfs, then you can have a separate set of CNFs in each such folder, and each of those folders can thus hold a separate multi-page CNF set. And in each of these sets you can then have menu shortcuts for launching one of the other uLE instances, so as to 'switch' to another set.

The big drawback of this method is of course that it will waste a lot of space for the extra uLE elf files in each folder, so this method is best used on some larger storage medium (USB drives?) where wasted space of this magnitude won't matter.

For example:
On a 4GB USB stick the space loss of 440KB per uLE elf is only one hundredth part of 1%, so completely negligible, though it would be over 5% of an 8MB MC.

Best regards: dlanor

[ScoobyDoo]

@dlanor
You got it 100%.My first 5 CNF´s Theme ist working.My "Problem" is to switch to another 5 CNF´s Theme.So it´s not possible through uLaunchELF.That´s not so good for me,but that´s my "Problem".

OT:Can someone help me,to copy Files from USB to MC with RadShell??

[dlanor]

@dlanor
You got it 100%.My first 5 CNF´s Theme ist working.My "Problem" is to switch to another 5 CNF´s Theme.So it´s not possible through uLaunchELF.That´s not so good for me,but that´s my "Problem".

Well, the simplest solution is to use one of the two 5 CNF Themes as the default one, with uLE elf in mc0:/BOOT/ and the 5 CNF files in mc0:/SYS-CONF/ as usual.

Then you create a new folder like mc0:/Theme_2/ and inside that folder you put all 5 CNF files of the second theme, together with an extra copy of the uLE elf file.

Next you start up the main uLE elf and define a new launch button for it, which starts the 2nd uLE elf inside mc0:/Theme_2/, which you then go ahead and use. When that uLE instance is launched it finds the CNF files of Theme_2 in its own folder, and this ignores the normal CNF files used by the main elf instance. And now you can define a new launch button for Theme_2 to start the main uLE elf, so as to switch back to the first theme again.

The effect is the same as if you could run a single uLE instance and switch between the themes in mc0:/SYS-CONF/ and mc0:/Theme_2/, except that you need an extra copy of the uLE elf to do it.

OT:Can someone help me,to copy Files from USB to MC with RadShell??

That is a bit tricky if you need to do it as part of an auto-launched radshell.rsh script as RadShell does not allow time for the USB drivers to finish intialization on the IOP side before proceeding with the script on the EE side of the interface, which can cause operations to fail simply because the EE processor tries to do things specified by the radshell script before the USB device drivers running on the IOP processor are ready to do anything at all with the physical device.

One very simple way to handle that is to add primitive delay instructions of your own after the device driver loading, such as in the following example:

fontsize 0.6
border 20 20
iopreset

load rom0:SIO2MAN
load rom0:MCMAN
load rom0:MCSERV

load int:iomanx.irx
load int:filexio.irx

load mc0:/SYS-CONF/USBD.IRX
load mc0:/SYS-CONF/USBHDFSD.IRX

cls
echo USB driver init countdown 4
cls
echo USB driver init countdown 3
cls
echo USB driver init countdown 2
cls
echo USB driver init countdown 1
cls
echo USB drivers initialized

script CopyUSBFiles.rsh

For a simplistic method like this it is of course a matter of trial-and-error how many 'countdown' entries you will need to make the USB drive access work right afterwards. And that will also vary with the USB drives tested.

Since I don't know what you want to achieve, I also left out any detailed operations using "copyfile" and possibly "del" commands to be performed by that hypothetical "CopyUSBFiles.rsh" script.

But typical examples of such script commands could be like the following line:

copyfile mc0:/BOOT/BOOT.ELF mass0:/some_folder/uLaunchELF.ELF

That could then be used if you wanted to copy the uLE program ELF to some USB folder.

Best regards: dlanor

[ScoobyDoo]

Ah...OK,more uLaunchELF´s with another Theme!!But if a Programm have the Back to Boot.ELF funktion,then the uLaunchELF in Boot Directory starts ever with only one "Theme".

My idea is to Copy the CNF´s from one Theme to Boot Directory.I make 4 Buttons in uLaunchELF for the "Themes".RadShell copys the CNF´s from one Theme Folder to MC0:/Boot.