BatMgr icon location

The updated user guide describes the BatMgr icon as being on the right side of the icon bar. This shocked me because my BatMgrHAL variant which is used with RISC OS 5 places the icon on the left, as dictated by the Style Guide:

When you place an icon on the icon bar, put icons relating to physical devices and resources such as filing systems on the left, and others on the right.

In my mind a battery is a physical device, and so BatMgr should live on the left of the icon bar. But sure enough, if you search the ‘net for photos/screenshots of the A4 or the Stork (or check the original BatMgr sources) then the BatMgr icon is placed on the right. So just as with the Display Manager, this seems to be another case of Acorn’s hypocrisy/ignorance when it comes to the Style Guide.

So now we have to decide whether to move the icon to the right (a simple change), or revise the opening chapter of the user guide. Or maybe revise the style guide to elaborate on the rules!

What say ye?

What say ye?

On the left!

The Display Manager’s location is a quirk of history, I think. Originally, it was a 16-colour palette redefiner, so plausibly ought to have been on the right. It was only when displays became more varied that its role got expanded and tied more closely to the physical monitor. I think it’s outlived its usefulness completely now, and ought to be excised, leaving the Configure plugin as the tool for, er, configuring the monitor. But that’s probably a fairly major step to take, given how long it’s been there.

So now we have to decide whether to move the icon to the right (a simple change), or revise the opening chapter of the user guide.

Left.

I concur with Chris’ logic that Display Manager morphed out of Palette utility. Indeed if we look in Display Manager it uses WimpPriority_ModeChooser, and guess what? That’s defined as the same value that the PRM lists for Palette.

We’ll probably never know if that was a mistake retro-justified, or wanting to keep it where Palette utility was.

Right.

You could change mode using the palette utility, and I guess that the display manager grew out of that as the mode settings became important and messing with the palette all but forgotten.

Justification: it’s been on the right for thirty years, it should remain there lest we start to consider if Switcher is a resource manager which also belongs on the left?

Or in other words, leave “screw with the UI for the sake of screwing with the UI” to the Firefox developers…

FWIW, I consider that if it’s on the left it’s some sort of filing system (with !Printers being an oddity), as that is generally the case in my experience and use.

The updated user guide describes the BatMgr icon as being on the right side of the icon bar. This shocked me because my BatMgrHAL variant which is used with RISC OS 5 places the icon on the left.

Well, I can explain this part, at least: Having not used/seen a battery-powered machine, I assumed that the text was correct and kept it as-is :)

Right – I/O (storage) on the left

Right, move Printers to the right as well. Irrespective of what the style guide said nearly 30 years ago, the left is irrevocably associated with storage.

Update the style guide whilst you’re at it, OS UI design has moved on since the 80’s and left RISCOS far behind!

OS UI design has moved on since the 80’s but still hasn’t caught up with RISC OS

FTFY :-)

VirtualRPC plants its Battery Manager icon on the right, immediately to the left of the Display Manager.

In my mind a battery is a physical device, and so BatMgr should live on the left of the icon bar.

This hinges on what is meant by “device”. RISC OS can use “device” as jargon to mean something handling files, which might be an over simplification, such as null: or printer: and filing systems. The battery is a physical thing but is it a device in the same sense that the other left hand side denizens are devices.

My vote would be that as the battery manager relates to machine information similarly to the the Task and Display Managers then it should be on the right.

VirtualRPC plants its Battery Manager icon on the right, immediately to the left of the Display Manager.

Not strickly accurate. The emulated RISCOS plants its Battery Manager icon on the right.

However, for overall consistency, it adds weight to the case for leaving the icon on the right.

VirtualRPC plants its Battery Manager icon on the right, immediately to the left of the Display Manager.

Not strickly accurate. The emulated RISCOS plants its Battery Manager icon on the right.

The penny dropped, eventually. VAbattery is a 3QD/VirtualAcorn configuration plugin included in OS4.02 and OS4.39 as supplied with VRPC.

It feels to me that being on the right of the iconbar is the correct place. The left is for file system related icons.

The penny dropped, eventually. VAbattery is a 3QD/VirtualAcorn configuration plugin included in OS4.02 and OS4.39 as supplied with VRPC.

Sorry. You are right. It is not the Acorn A4 Mattery Manager. which is what I was trying to say.

Seems like the general preference is for right, and I can understand the logic, but I must say the Style Guide’s current language does make sense to me: applications on the right, hardware devices (storage, printers, batteries) on the left. The Task Manager is a bit of a special case as it does all sorts of things, and as said already the Display Manager’s current position is an anomaly – I think it should be quietly retired.

The right.

When the Style Guide was written, you were very swish indeed if you had two disc icons on the left of the iconbar, and if you had CD and Access and RamFS, well you were probably “l33t” or something.

Now I’ve got ten icons on the left with no CDFS, RamFS or Printers. Keep it on the right.

!Printers is weird anyway.

I think it should be quietly retired.

What? Because you never change screen mode? I do, quite often. It’s no good making software that works well in my native 1280×1024 if it blows hard when running in 640×480...

After all, my first few months of using modern RISC OS was done using S-VGA output on the Beagle, and that doesn’t exactly offer much in the way of display size. ;-) Plus, software shouldn’t “just fail” if the screen size is something different to that which is used by the programmer.

well you were probably “l33t” or something.

Hmm, my A5000 had three harddiscs (normal internal plus two SCSI partitions), the floppy, plus Econet! ;-)

When I got the Simtec IDE card, that want up to two SCSI drives, two internal IDE drives, three external IDE drives, floppy, and Econet. Oh the joys of salvaging harddiscs from PCs because what was satisfactory for Windows 3.1x was too small to be useful once Windows 95 arrived. :-)
That’s also how come I know about the PSU paperclip trick. I needed an extra PSU to run that lot, and had to fool it into thinking a computer was attached so the thing would even start up.

Add !Printers for the little LQ-compatible bubblejet and the LJ2-compatible Laser printer, plus RamFS, and later on a SCSI CD-ROM (with an epic 2x read speed!), then you’re talking a veritable pile of icons on the left. ;-)

Because you never change screen mode?

I guess the point is that we have two different apps controlling the screen resolution – the iconbar display manager and the monitor configuration plugin. The interfaces are almost identical, and the only real difference is that one saves its settings and the other doesn’t. It’s been mentioned before that this is confusing to new users, and it also seems like unnecessary duplication. I think it would be better for the the configuration plugin to be the one point of control for the screen dimensions/monitor type, etc, and for the iconbar space to be freed up.

Now I’ve got ten icons on the left with no CDFS, RamFS or Printers.

MiniDisc

I think it would be better for the the configuration plugin to be the one point of control for the screen dimensions/monitor type, etc,

With an option to not save the chosen settings?

While they look and feel very similar, they serve slightly different purposes. One is for setting the monitor options to be used forevermore (or at least until fiddled with again), the other is for doing it temporarily…

If you want to free up iconbar space, why not just *Unplug DisplayManager?

With an option to not save the chosen settings?

There is such an option – just don’t click on the save (set) option.

So, the configure option can be used for both forever more or temporarily

If you want to free up iconbar space, why not just *Unplug DisplayManager?

I like it. I have now done just that. :)

There is such an option – just don’t click on the save (set) option.

I would actually argue that while clicking Try should indeed set the resolution, clicking Cancel should then cancel the change. It doesn’t, but I think it should!

Meanwhile, discussion about wholesale moving of icons three weeks before the User Guide goes to print isn’t helping me sleep :)

So when wifi comes to RSIC OS where would you place the icon?

Left?

Right?

I wonder if subliminally people expect the battery on the right because that’s where the Windows system tray is, so on my Dell laptop the battery is on the right.

The follow up to Jeffrey’s question is then where would the WiFi signal strength/selector go? All the other networking stuff (Omni, ShareFS, Econet) lives on the left, so I guess it would make sense to have it there. But then if I was using a laptop I’d probably expect the battery indicator to be somewhere nearby too.

RISC OS is essentially backwards compared with the Windows task bar: start menu far left (=> Task Manager far right) and devices in the system tray far right (=> devices on the left). Hmm.

Since the OMAP3 is the only thing which includes battery manager, and of those only the TouchBook and Pandora enable it, it’s surprising that so many people have seen it!