Miscellaneous

 

Specify the location of the PsTools utilities. These programs are only available for Windows NT4/2000/XP (and 2003!) and can be used to gather information about currently running processes, etc. The programs are used by SVAR to determine unique process IDs for each instance of seticon.exe, which can set icons on individual windows. Once the process ID is known, the utilities are also used to terminate a given process, i.e., to close down the instance of seticon.exe responsible for the icon on the window that is being closed. The option is only available for the stand-alone release on Windows NT4/2000/XP (and 2003).

 

This option is available for the stand-alone release on Windows NT4/2000/XP (and 2003). If selected you'll find unique icons for bootstrapping dialogs, simulation dialogs, restrictions dialogs, etc. Since it relies on running seticon.exe before the window is shown the loading time of the window is prolonged somewhat. On the other hand, it will be easier to locate the window from the icons on the taskbar.

 

This options is only available for the stand-alone release on Windows NT4/2000/XP (and 2003). If check marked Graphics windows will get an icon which separate them from other windows.

 

A modal window is a window that you have to react to before you can continue responding to other windows. An example is message boxes with an OK button. This option is only available on Windows NT4/2000/XP (and 2003). It will hide the icon from such windows and, in addition, it should hide the corresponding icon on the taskbar. This is the normal behavior for modal windows that do not have an icon in Windows. If selected, SVAR will run seticon.exe, but now it doesn't set an icon in the window but instead adds a property to the extended window style. Specifically, it tells Windoze that the window should have then extended style WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW. On my Windoze 2000 Pro system this does the job, but on Windoze NT4 the titlebar becomes smaller and text style changes to regular. The way seticon.exe is executed here implies that we don't need to kill seticon externally as the program closes by itself.

 

This option is only available in the stand-alone release of SVAR. The undo button is, by default, not displayed on the toolbar (and unavailable on the Edit menu) of figure graphics. By check marking the option, these functions will be shown. The availability of undo in graphs slows down the opening and closing of such windows since a copy of the original graphics file is stored in the Temporary directory. When unselected, such temporary storage is avoided.

 

This option is only available for the stand-alone release on Windows NT4/2000/XP (and 2003) when the version of MatLab is lower then 6.5. By default SVAR uses its own dialog for displaying "Browse for Directory" information. On Windows NT type systems it can run the utility program folder.exe, which displays the "Browse for Directory" dialog from Windows. When the underlying version of MatLab is 6.5 or greater it supports platform dependent "Browse for Directory" dialogs. These are always used by SVAR in such circumstances.

 

This option is again only available on Windows NT4 based operating systems, i.e NT4/2000/XP/2003. In addition, it's only available when the underlying version of MatLab is below 6.0. The reason for the latter is that from 6.0 MatLab supports customized file filters, while the operating system requirement is due to reliance on the utility fileopen.exe, which doesn't seem to run reliably on Windoze 9x and ME.

 

If you've check marked the "Hide the icon on certain modal windows" option above, SVAR will attempt to hide icons from message box dialogs. To make the transition smooth it requires a certain delay. You can control the delay parameter, measured in milliseconds, to your needs. By default it's set at 150 milliseconds. This options is only available for the stand-alone release on Windows NT4/2000/XP (and 2K3).

 

The directory where you wish SVAR to "store" temporary files. On Windoze it attempts to locate the temporary directory for the current user. On UN*X it defaults to "/usr/local/tmp". The temporary directory options allows you to change the directory that SVAR treats as the directory for temporary files. Please note that if you've installed SVAR with the setup program for Windoze, then SVAR's utility programs, e.g. run_prog.exe and splash.exe, still uses the Windoze temporary directory for the current user to unload built-in dll-files, such as nsExec.dll and System.dll. The launch program, svar.exe, always attempts to clean up any remaining SVAR related temporary files and folders from the that directory before closing.

 

This allows you to change the maximum value that the Number of responses control in the main program window can take on. The value must be a positive integer, and the default is 40.

 

 

 

Program Links

 

If you plan to make use of the icon display options I strongly recommend that also install the PsTools utilities. That way it's virtually certain that the number of instances of seticon.exe that are running will not exceed the number of windows with unique icons that are open.