Messages

• Memory Alert
• Interactive Messages

FS/2 generates five levels of messages to inform the user of functional information, warnings and errors. See Error and Warning Messages in the manual for the list of possible messages.

Interactive message - This highest level message pop up in a modal window (user can't do anything else until the user responds to the message) in the center of the FS/2 window. These messages occur when an unexpected result has occurred, unpredictable or undesirable results may occur, or at times, simply because user input is required for how to proceed. A terse description of the problem along with other information, such as the advisability of continuing the program, is displayed. The user is presented push button options for response.

Interactive Message Window

The lowest four levels are displayed in the Message window located on the Data Panel. These are:

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• Error - These are messages generated by function failures. The message generates an error tone or sound (for sound cards) and persists visually in the message window for twice the persistence time set in the Settings notebook. Most of these messages are extracted from the OS/2 message file.

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• Warning - These are messages warning the user of abnormal operation associated with the initiated function and usually indicate the function could not be performed. The message generates a warning tone sound and persists in the message Window for the persistence time set in the Settings notebook. Most of these messages are extracted from the OS/2 message file.

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• Information - These are information type messages. The message is displayed for the duration set for message persistence in the Settings Notebook and are silent.

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• Operation - These are messages indicating ongoing actions such as "Scanning Drive C:". They only exist for the duration of the action and are not saved.

Since the Error, Warning, Information and Operation messages use the same window, they are prioritized in the order presented above. A higher priority message will overwrite a lower priority messages in the message window but not vice versa.

The message window is also used to display the OS/2 swap file data. This data has the lowest display priority and will be displayed only when all messages have timed out and the window is free. The swap file size and free swap space alternate at the interval set on the Options pages in the Settings notebook whenever the display window is free of messages. Messages and swap data may be turned off in the notebook by setting persistence or interval respectively to zero.

For the error and warning messages, the last ten messages of each type are saved for the session only. For Information messages, the last twenty are saved. These messages are redisplayable in a Message History dialog accessed through the Data Panel popup menu.

The last message in the window may be recalled by a single click of the left mouse button in the window.

The Message window will dynamically resize itself to the full width of the main window if needed because of the message length. When this occurs, the messages are always left justified whereas normally they are centered in the window.