The Program Manager is the main interface for MirageOS that is built directly into the shell. It allows the execution of programs and the ability to alter various aspects of them, as well as viewing all information about your programs in an efficient manner. From this interface you can access all the functions available from our shell such as Renaming, Deleting, and Archiving programs, just to name a few. You can view your programs through a system of folders, and these folders have various attributes that the user can manipulate as well. This section of our webpage will give you information about the general usage of the Program Manager such as aspects of the layout, and the keypresses involved in various parts of this interface.

Below you will find images of the basic layout of the Program Manager, with numbers pointing to different regions of the layout. Look further down for descriptive comments about each of these regions. Those explanations will give information about what will be shown in those regions of the Program Manager, and give links to other pages that will contain more detailed information.

  

1. This is the Graphic Header that resides at the top of the Program Manager and most other Interfaces and notates the name of the shell, "MirageOS". This exists to allow users who are unfamiliar with the shell to be aware of its name whenever they start in an Interface.
   
   
2. This is the Scroll Bar of the Program Manager, which is an innovative feature programmed into MirageOS mainly for aesthetic purposes. The white box on the Scroll Bar indicates the position of the cursor within the whole list of program entries, in relation to maximum size of the list. The position of box will move whenever you scroll up or down in the Program Manager, and lets you know how far up or down in the list you are.
   
   
3. This region of the Program Manager, Folders Menu, and various other interfaces contains a word to notate in which part of the shell you are in. The word "MANAGER" indicates to the user that they are currently in the Program Manager, and the word "FOLDERS" notates they are in the Folders Menu, which looks identical to the Program Manager, but allows less access to its features. Goto This page for more information about the Folders Menu.
   
   
4. Here in the Program Manager you will find a listing of folders and programs that you have on your calculator, which you can scroll up and down through with a cursor. From this area you only see folders at the moment, which are closed and not displaying any programs. MAIN is the only default folder, and all others must be created by the user, which then they can move programs back and forth between the folders.
   
   
5. This area of the Program Manager shows File Information about the highlighted program or folder, and in this case, currently showing Folder Information for MAIN. It tells the user how many programs are in the folder, its sort state, and the total size of all the programs in that folder. For more information about all the various aspects of the File Info section, goto the File/Folder Information page.
   
   
6. The bottom of the screen in the Program Manager is the area where it displays the Description of the currently selected program or folder. It is also the location of the Function Bar, which you can see in item #9, and serves as the place to display a message or command to the user. For example, if you were to rename a program, the prompt for that name would occur in this area, and the typed letters would appear there.
   
   
7. This area is the same as noted in item #4, except that you can currently see a listing of programs. When a folder is opened, it will change its graphic to depict that, and then all the entries of programs will appear below the folder entry. If there are more programs than can fit on the screen (six entries maximum) then the user will need to scroll down to see them.
   
   
8. Here you will see the File Info section of the Program Manager, now showing information for the currently selected program, as opposed to a folder. Several attributes about the program are displayed, such as if its Archived or Not, Hidden from the TI-OS, or Edit-Protected. The program's type is displayed underneathe those, meaning whether it is a MirageOS, ION, TI-82, or BASIC program. At the bottom of this region is the file size of the program.
   
   
9. Shown in this region is the Function Bar of the Program Manager, an innovative feature of MirageOS that mimics the menu system of the TI-85/86, and lets you choose commands by using the top function keys of the calculator. For more information about all the available Function processes, goto this Function Bar Information page.

Program Manager General Usage:

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When you start the Program Manager for the first time, at an initial start/restart of MirageOS, there will be the default of only one folder, named MAIN, which is not deletable or renamable. You have the ability to create new folders at your preference, and they can be deleted or renamed by certain functions. All the programs that you have loaded initially will be found in MAIN, and they can be moved to other folders later on. That process is done through another specific function, which information can be found for on the Function Bar Information page.

At each start of the Program Manager, your folders will be closed with no programs showing, so that you can see most of the folders that exist. In order to open a folder you would first highlight the folder you want, by moving the cursor up or down with the Arrow keys, and then pressing Enter or 2nd on that folder. The graphic for that particular folder will change, and then resemble an open folder. Upon opening a folder, the Program Manager will refresh, and the program contents will be displayed below the folder. Your cursor will remain on the current folder and you need to move it down to select a program. You may close the folder again, by pressing Enter or 2nd on that entry once again, then its contents will be removed.

The Program Manager has the ability to show only six (6) entries at maximum, whether they are folders or programs. In order to select more than six folders that exist but are not onscreen, you must move your cursor to the top or bottom edges of the viewable area, and press the arrow key once more to scroll the list. If your cursor is at the bottom of the list and you press down to goto the next item, the list will be scrolled upwards, the top entry will be removed, and the next entry will appear at the bottom of the screen. The same goes for scrolling up where the list is moved downwards and the next upper entry will be shown.

The entries that appear in this list are of Folder names and Program names, which can both be only eight (8) characters at maximum. Their names are displayed in uppercase only so that there would be a fixed width of the names of the folders and programs. If lowercase was used, some of the program names might span over into the scroll bar graphic because of variable-width letters. When you enter a new folder name, or rename a folder or program, you will be limited to using uppercase letters or numbers, and a max of eight characters.

In order to execute a program from the Program Manager of MirageOS, you would find its entry by identifying it by name or description. The names are located in the list, and the description of the currently highlighted program is shown at the bottom of the screen. Once you have found a program you want to run, press Enter or 2nd to have MirageOS execute it. The program will start and function as it was programmed to do. Upon exiting that program, you will be returned to the shell, and if the Program Manager is being used (as opposed to another External GUI), then the Program Manager will appear again as you last left it. You would then continue using the Program Manager like normal.

The File Info section of the program Manager shows various aspects of programs and folders as briefly described in the Layout section above. For more detailed information about the parts of the File Info section and what they mean to the user, view the File/Folder Information page. Whenever you are selecting a program, information about that program will be displayed, and when you are selecting a folder, info about that folder will be displayed, however, these two File Info layouts are different. The contents of the File Info section will switch accordingly whenever you move from a program to a folder and vice versa.

In order to view the About Screen from the Program Manager, you would press the Stat key. To goto the Options Screen of MirageOS, you would press Alpha, which will take you to that screen, and return you to the Program Manager when you are done altering options. You have the ability to change the screen contrast from the Program Manager by pressing the plus and minus keys. To Quit the Program Manager back to the Homescreen, press the Mode key. A summary of all the keys in the Program Manager are shown in the next section.