10.0 Credits and History
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10.1 Credits
Peter Li wrote the FTP engine which manages FTP connections, obtaining directory listings, file transfers (including the low level Partial File Support) and other remote file operations such as renaming files and deleting files. He also wrote the binary transfer engine and the MacBinary transfer engine. He also put together all the database related code used for directory/window position caching, partial file information database, etc. Peter also designed the splash screen and the Bookmark Converter included in the package.
Vincent Tan wrote the interface for the FTP engine - the part of the program which manages drawing, selecting, clicking in windows and dialogs. Other user interface items like the Preferences, bookmarks, the file transfer dialog and the registration form dialog. He also wrote the binhex 4.0 engine. Vincent also wrote the Netscape browser AppleScript applets and "Change To Partial File" drop-applet included in the package.
Peter and Vincent both engineered the partial file support and wrote the documentation.
Thanks to Stuart Cheshire <cheshire@CS.Stanford.EDU> for the Natural Order source code. It's a routine which causes the directory listings to appear in an order which is more intuitively correct. For example, file2.jpg appears before file10.jpg instead of the other way around. If you're interested, you can get it from <ftp://bolo.stanford.edu//Public/Stuart's tech notes/Natural Order>.
NetFinder works best when used with Internet Config. Thanks to all of the authors of this nifty system. Here are the IC sites in Australia and the USA.
"Change To Partial File" is based on DropShell, which is written by Leonard Rosenthol, Marshall Clow, and Stephan Somogyi.
Last but not least, portions of this software are...
"Copyright (c) 1991, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
- All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement:
This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.
- Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGE."
Check out the license agreement for more legal information about the use of this software.
10.2 Version History
1.1.3 April 12, 1997.
(These notes by VT)
Bug fixes:
- When you dragged the top left folder icon onto a display window, a crash would occur. Fixed.
- Listings with symbolic links would cause a crash. Fixed.
- Files downloaded with text translating would end up as SimpleText files ('TEXT'/'ttxt'), ie, it ignored the setting in Internet Config for whatever extension that text file had. Fixed.
- Uploading files by Binhex encoding now respects the end of line convention of the remote system.
- Unknown file extensions now use MacBinary enabled mode, not MacBinary disabled.
- The cursor is no longer left as a watch cursor after it creates a directory.
- When you opened a new window and typed the first letters of a file, it would select the file but scroll the file into where the horizontal scroll bar's was, instead of just above the scroll bar. Fixed.
- Paths in URLs are now exported with escape character encoding so that Netscape (and others) can use it. The only thing that won't work properly is a file with "/" in its name. The "/" is not encoded but you would be silly to have a file with a "/" in its name anyway because it confuses unix systems or programs that run under unix systems. Thus not encoding "/"s is not such a big problem.
- When a triangle was opened but there was an error listing the directory (eg, not enough permissions), a closed triangle would be drawn on top of the open triangle. Fixed.
- Previously, the document kind strings displayed were of whatever the type/creator pair that the extension mapped to. The problem was that several extensions would map to the same type/creator pair causing inaccuracy in the "kind" displayed, eg ".txt" and ".bat" would both map to a SimpleText text file which would cause "Ascii Text" to be displayed. This has been fixed so that now the extension is used to correctly display the file's kind, eg ".txt" now displays "Text File" and ".bat" now displays "MS-DOS Batch File".
- Put back the "Tell Netscape not to use NF" AppleScript program because (apparently) Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0.1 does make the change permanent (but oddly enough Navigator Standard 3.0.1 does not).
- Now flushes the file's and volume's information to disk so that if you crash, the partial file will still be there (although its icon may not be correct) and you shouldn't have to download most of it again.
New Features:
- added scripts for Netscape Navigator 2.0.2.
- implemented double-clickable Internet Config Preferences files. This is so that you could have a custom setup, and in particular, a custom File Extension/File Mapping database (ie, your own set of "suffix mappings"). See the section Using Custom Internet Config Settings for detailed instructions. IMPORTANT: users of previous versions of NetFinder must rebuild the desktop database of the volume that NetFinder is on to get the drag and drop functionality. If you don't, you won't be able to drop any custom settings files on NetFinder.
1.1.2 April 6, 1997.
(These notes by VT)
Bug fixes and tweaks:
- Put in more tweaks to try to reduce the number of "Type 11" errors.
- Fixed crashing on trying to select a folder.
- Fixed a directory caching bug which caused you to get the last listing when you tried to connect to a new site. Note that the "Directory Cache" folder will contain a file named "0" (zero); it can be deleted.
- Uploading has been modified to ignore pre-existing folders on ftp sites.
- Tweaked the one-off upload options to display the multi-file dialog when you upload a folder (instead of the one-file dialog).
1.1.1 April 2, 1997.
(These notes by VT)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a cause of the mysterious "Type 11" errors which occurred when you closed a window or quit the app or (sometimes) opened a listing window.
- Many simple GUI glitches are fixed.
- Preference saving was broken in v1.1. Fixed.
- Remote copying of files from/to NetPresenz servers is better because MacBinary mode is now turned on/off for each file according to the file's extension.
- The "Go To Directory..." command no longer strips all the "."s from the path you enter (and ".." still works).
- Logging of remote copying was not working in v1.1. Fixed.
- The progress bar now counts and progresses items in a downloading folder better than before (if you drag a folder to download it, the sizes are now properly set up for each item inside the folder).
- Turning off directory caching now works.
- If you chose to skip/ignore downloading an item that already existed on your disk, that item would previously be changed into a partial file (oops). Fixed.
- If you chose to skip/ignore downloading an item that already existed on your disk, the program would download it anyway (under a new name). Fixed.
- tightened the checking for bad IC mappings prefs; it now ignores empty lists.
- Fewer low memory crashes will now occur because the program will now refuse to add items to the listing window if there is less than 50K of free memory in its memory space. This prevents severe crashing from having very little memory left.
- Fixed a bug which caused the NetFinder download folder not to be loaded in when the program started.
- If you cancelled the Select Download Folder dialog after double clicking a remote file, it would download the file anyway to the Desktop. Fixed.
- If a NetFinder download folder was specified, it used to download files to the folder above it. It now downloads to the correct folder. This bug prevented you from downloading to the root directory of your hard disk.
- You can now create a bookmark to a folder named "C:" (it ends up being named "C-.url").
New Features:
- Added more support for Windows NT 3.5 ftp servers.
- Extension/suffix mapping now works better: the description from Internet Config is used first and if one can't be found, the mapping information from the System (Mac Easy Open) is used.
- Added a New Folder button in Select Download Folder dialog.
- The last opened preference pane is now remembered.
- You can now select and copy text from the transcript window.
- You can now disable the splash screen (registered users only).
- You can now suppress passwords from being saved/exported in URLs.
- You can now upload a file/folder via a menu item.
- You can now connect/open URLs which have a username but no password; such URLs will bring up a dialog requesting a password.
- Improved the handling of URLs so that Netscape-generated URLs can now be handled correctly. For example, if "ftp://extro.ucc.su.oz.au/home/users/vtan/public-html/" is sent, NetFinder will now first try the path "home/users/vtan/public-html/" and if that fails, it will then try "/home/users/vtan/public-html/" - note the starting "/".
1.1. March 25, 1997.
Bug Fixes:
- Added better support for "DOS" servers.
- Added code to prevent the engine from going "out of sync" when talking to the server.
- Fixed some problems which may have caused crashes when quitting from a server.
- Fixed a bug in the PPC ANSI library (which also exists in the PowerMac ROMs!). This would result in crashes on PPC machines when performing a listing (not from cache). Mail Peter if anyone is interested.
- Engine now handles connecting to servers which "kick us off" if the server is too busy.
- Added more error reporting code, less unimplemented traps. The program should now put up a "Signal" message if things go "really" wrong.
- Fixed a bug in the data identification routine used when downloading files. This would sometimes cause the user to get an "unimplemented trap".
- Fixed several minor user interface bugs.
New Features:
- Added support for upload permissions and changing permissions
- Added copying and duplicating remote files, both to the same server and to a different server
- Added the ability to "go to" a directory without having to go through all the intermediate directories.
- Added a Get Info window
- Rearranged and added many preferences:
- Non-English sorting
- folder icons can now be drawn plain
- ability to disable renaming items
- listing windows can now be displayed in a selectable font
- downloading "intelligently" is even more intelligent (can look for a Binhex file buried in a MacBinary file)
- the download location has more options
- you can now set default upload permissions
- Added help items to the Help menu.
- Displays more kinds in the "Kind" field (now uses Internet Config's information if you don't have the appropriate application).
- Now remembers the last entered URL in the New FTP Connection dialog.
- Now decodes escape characters in URLs sent to the program.
- You can now use option-command-W to close all windows.
- Undo when renaming an item now works.
- Added one-off downloading option dialogs.
1.0.2. March 12, 1997.
- Fixed crashing when trying to delete files.
- Rearranged some of the preferences
- The default for "resolve aliases" is now OFF (this was causing problems on some servers... grr...)
- Added "Tell Netscape not use NF" applescript program
- Added VMS directory parsing (very limited testing at this stage)
- Fixed bug with balloon help icon updating in the prefs window
- Added "PutURL" apple event
- No longer mounts AppleShare volumes when trying to locate the download folder
- Fixed problems with displaying suffix icons
- Fixed bug causing prefs window to crash when it was closed
- Fixed bug stopping files from being deleted if they were inside an open twisted down folder
- Fixed bug in URL parsing which caused resumption of downloads to fail
- Fixed a date computation bug (no longer uses last year's date).
- Added support for some FTP servers which returned a slightly different listing.
- Sorting of names is now case insensitive.
- Fixed a timing bug which would result in not showing a directory listing for slow servers. Even when you know that there files available.
- Fixed a few bugs causing crashes when closing windows/quitting
1.0.1. March 6, 1997.
- Fixed bug which prevented the program running on PowerPC machines using MacTCP.
- Fixed bug which caused it to crash when you first ran it.
- Partial file resumption was broken. Fixed. You MUST remove old any old "Partial.db" files from "NetFinder Preferences f" folder.
1.0. March 4, 1997.
10.3 Program History (by Peter)
NetFinder was the inspiration of Peter Li (me), but without the help of Vincent Tan in the later part of the project, this product would not look and feel as good as it is today. It all started around the first half of 1996, when I discovered that it was possible to continue a partially downloaded file. I got excited, because I missed those days when I could continue transferring a file over a modem using ZModem. Remember those days? It wasn't that long ago.
Anyway, I was so excited with the network aspect of things I just didn't feel like getting into more interface designing. As time went on, Vincent and many of my other friends were almost making it a weekly thing to ask how things were going. But my reply was always the same, "getting there". Then one day I decided that this project needed to be finished, so I asked Vincent to help code the interface for me. That was around the 4th quarter of 1996. With the little time we had between our own daytime jobs/activities, we managed to get the product to a more useful state, as opposed to my terminal based test program.
Here it is now, it works and I don't think I can do without it. Look out for future versions!
Go to the Table Of Contents, go back to 9.0 Contacting The Authors or go forward to 11.0 Frequently Asked Questions.
Copyright © 1997, Peter Li and Vincent Tan.