1. My menus have become so crowded. What can I do?

   If you consider your context menus too crowded, you can tell the WPS to omit displaying those menu entries which are only "doubles" to mouse operations ("Copy", "Move", etc.).

   - On Warp 3, putting a SET MENUSTYLE=SHORT into CONFIG.SYS will do the job.

   - On Warp 4, there is a new setting in the "System" object in the "System Setup" folder. You should find it on the "Menu" tab. This setting is also found in every folder's own settings notebook; there is also folder Setup String to set this for folders individually. See "WPFolder Setup Strings" for more.

   Moreover, you can remove many default menu items individually in the "Workplace Shell" object on the "Context menu" pages.

   The folder content functions are helpful, but can crowd your context menus too much also if you declare many folders to be your favorites. On my system, I have created a separate folder called "frequent", which I have declared to be my only favorite folder. In this folder, I can put all those folders which I frequently access, so I only have one context menu entry, but a submenu with all my favorite folders.

2. When I select a context menu item, not the XFolder function, but some other function gets executed. What is this?

   Probably a menu ID conflict with some other WPS extension. This is a known problem with Network logins. Go to the "Workplace Shell" object, "XFolder page", then to page 2 ("XFolder Internals"), and raise the "Menu item ID offset". Press "Help" there for details.

3. When I select a non-XFolder context menu item, XFolder still executes one of its own functions. What is this?

   Same thing as above.

4. When I open a context menu, my system crashes/hangs. What can I do?

   Versions prior to V0.82 served as a test for video drivers in this respect. ;-) I have found out that some video drivers do not support transparent background mix for bitmaps, which XFolder used to use. While some drivers silently ignored the transparency, other drivers crashed badly and stopped the whole system (especially Matrox Millenium). With V0.82, I have changed the icon painting for folder content menus to use regular icons instead of bitmaps. Icon painting is still disabled per default in case something should still go wrong. Turn on "Show icons" on the "Context menus" pages in "Workplace Shell" to enable icon painting.

   If you still have problems, Ralph Scharpf reported that one could install the IBM GRADD drivers for MGA video cards instead, which appear to be working. Unfortunately, those cards do not support 1024x768 with more than 60 Hz, but if you can live with 800x600, this appears to be a solution.

5. Why do folder content menus not work with folders on the Launchpad?

   I don't know. They're always empty. I guess the Launchpad fails to call XFolder's window procedure, but uses its own one instead. I have found no way to figure out from where the context menus were opened yet, because the Launchpad uses regular shadows for displaying objects.

6. I have added something to the config folder, but it doesn't appear in the menus. Is this a compatibility conflict?

   Probably no. Since V0.70, XFolder uses the .ICONPOS extended attributes of the config folder and its subfolders to determine the order of objects in a folder. Trouble is, these are only written by the WPS when the folder is closed, and only if the folder was open in Icon or Details view. So simply open the folder in Details view and close it again. That should work.

7. How do I get the underlined characters in menu items for keyboard shortcuts?

   Put a tilde character ("~") in front of a certain character in the program object's title. This will underline the following character in the menu entry, allowing you to type this character as a keyboard shortcut when the context menu is displayed.

   (This is different from the folder hotkeys which XFolder adds to open folders.)

   Example: OS/2 ~command window will make "c" a keyboard shortcut in the context menu.

   For this, be sure to check "Suppress ''~'' in window title" in the "Workplace Shell" object on the "Context menus" pages.

8. I have added a program object to the config folder, but when I select the menu item, I get error messages from the program. What am I doing wrong?

   You will probably need to put a "%" character into the "Parameters" field of the program object to prevent XFolder from passing the folder as a parameter. See "Extra features for program objects" for details.

9. I have added a shadow to the config folders, but opening it doesn't work like with the other objects. What am I doing wrong?

   XFolder does open shadows of program objects in the configuration folders, but it does not change their directories or parameters. This is not a bug, it's an intentional limitation for security. COPY your program objects to the configuration folders instead of creating shadows. See the bottom of the "Extra features for program objects" page for details.

10. How can I execute CMD.EXE commands?

    For commands which are built into CMD.EXE (such as REN, COPY, DEL, CD), put a program object into the XFolder Configuration Folder. Then specify CMD.EXE in the program object with /C <commands> in the "Parameters" field.

    Example for deleting the folder's whole content: put CMD.EXE in the "Path and filename" field and /C DEL * in the "Parameters" field. This is, of course, just a stupid example and NOT recommended.

11. How can I use REXX for WPS manipulation?

    I have included extra information in the appendices of this documentation, which might be useful to you:

    - a complete list of all the WPFolder settings strings;

    - a collection of OS/2's default Object ID's.

    - a diagram of the WPS Class Hierarchy.

    If you're not too familiar with REXX, you can copy and modify the ALWSSORT.CMD file in the XFolder directory to test some of the folder settings. Please see the "Related files" page for more.

    In addition, I strongly recommend the INF book "Rexx Tips&Tricks" by Bernd Schemmer, which is available as "rxtt28.zip" (or newer) on Hobbes.

12. Why can't I open my new config folder object more than once?

    If you create programs objects which need to be opened several times from different directories (namely for command line objects), be sure to check the "Create new window" flag on the "Window" tab in the object's notebook. Otherwise OS/2 will not start a new window but simply resurface the already opened one.

13. I have deleted the XFolder Configuration Folder. How do I get it back?

    Don't worry: As soon as you try to open a context menu, XFolder will notify you and automatically create a new, empty one on your desktop or recreate the default configuration, which you may then choose.

    Note that this behavior implies that you MUST have a Configuration Folder somewhere on your system while XFolder is installed. It may be empty, but it must exist.