The DiskSalv 3 Question and Answer Sheet by Dave Haynie I figured there might be a few questions about DiskSalv 3 that I could answer in advance here. I suspect a few folks out there are wondering what happened to that $40 they sent me last June, and they're of course right to wonder. You all may also wonder about the future of DiskSalv, which of course is what this is all about. * Dude, where's my manual! That's a perfectly reasonable question, so here's the story. From the beginning of DiskSalv 2 (or thereabouts), I had planned to write a professional quality (well, "the Danes call it Quality") manual to go along with DiskSalv 2. I belived this a reasonable thing to do, because of the complexity of some of the more advanced features in DiskSalv 2, some of the questions I get along the lines of "this failed, how do I fix it", and other things not easily addressed in a relatively small ASCII help file. Obviously a manual costs money to make, and I honestly didn't mind the idea of making a bit of a profit after about three years or so (not exactly continuous) in the development of DiskSalv 2. So after the release of DiskSalv last June, I started writing the manual. One thing I really hadn't considered was what to do about non-English (in an American sort of way) versions of this manual. The folks who helped me out with locale files and even in some cases localized "cheap" manuals for DiskSalv 2 did a fine job, and they have my sincerest thanks. But any sort of commercial version would need a local distributer and obviously some profits for this local distributer. After asking around a bit, I found some interest in this idea, but most folks though I would need some differentiation from the Shareware version to make this possible. Thus, DiskSalv 3 was born. I did, after all, have this long list of "neat stuff" I didn't have a chance to put into DiskSalv 2, and this seemed to be just the incentive. Of course, this puts a big delay in the manual release (originally planned for by the end of August), but I think in the long run it'll be worth it for anyone who's ordered the manual. * Hey, I ordered that manual pretty early. Don't I get some special consideration? You sure do. Anyone who ordered the manual will get DiskSalv 2 updates until DiskSalv 3 ships. No matter how long that takes. And of course, you're at the top of the DiskSalv 3 list. * You sure nailed that August release! How long after your January release date will I really be waiting? Sure, I'm no Kreskin, but I'm determined to ship a very complete DiskSalv 3 release by the January 2 release date. I fully intend to be stuffing disks and, hopefully, manuals into boxes all day on January 1, if not before then. Well, once the hangover's gone anyway. If the manual's not done by then (it's not totally under my control, of course) you'll still get the DiskSalv 3 shipped, with the manual shortly following. The miss of the August date was due primarily to my change of strategy, not a really bad sense of timing. * Gee, I haven't received anything from you yet. What's the deal? If you've registered for DiskSalv 2 in any category, you can expect a registration confirmation in the mail shortly. I decided to print up an official registration certificate and a DiskSalv 2 sticker for your floppy, which goes out to everyone who's registered. If you ordered updates or the commercial deal, you'll be getting the registration form and a floppy with the V11.28 release on it. * What about DiskSalv 2? The V11.28 release is a pretty significant update. While there are only a few new features you can see, lots of internal stuff has been improved. I intend to keep DiskSalv 2 alive as Shareware in parallel with the commercial DiskSalv 3. While I don't expect to add many major new features to DiskSalv 2, it will progress. Any bugs in the actual operation of DiskSalv 2 will be fixed as quickly as I can get a handle on them. I imagine that some enhancements will continue to be added to DiskSalv 2. Once the smoke clears with the DiskSalv 3 release, some DiskSalv 3 features may eventually migrate to DiskSalv 2, though substantial differences in the internal structure of the two programs will keep them separate. * Hey, I thought the DiskSalv 2 GUI was damn near perfect! Why mess with success? The DiskSalv 2 interface was kind of an evolutionary thing. I got the idea for some of its original elements (anyone recall the "Teaser.pic" file that went out with DiskSalv V1.42 long, long ago) by looking at the NeXT computer we got and programming on a Hedley Hires screen. I didn't know all that much about GUIs, user interfaces, etc. but I figured anything was an advantage over DiskSalv 1.x. At one point along the way, the Commodore Software Engineering group approached me about their licensing DiskSalv 2 for inclusion in Workbench, as a replacement for DiskDoctor. Being Engineers all, we set aside any legal issues and did a design review on an early DiskSalv 2. In the process, I learned about GadTools, the Style Guide, AmigaGuide, Locale.library, etc. Although negotiations broke down (this had nothing to do with Software Engineering), much of the DiskSalv 2 design was influenced by what I though appropriate for a Workbench tool. A commercial program has a few options not available to a Workbench tool. The software group has some pretty tight space allocations on Workbench disks. Adding one disk may not seem like much, but if you multiply the cost by a million systems a year or so, it adds up. On the other hand, a single floppy has tons of space for a tool like DiskSalv, even packages with lots of extra stuff. So a bit more user friendliness can go into the program. DiskSalv 3 attempts to bring the DiskSalv user interface up to a commercially acceptable level. It does not, however, confuse a utility program with a video game as do some commercial utilities. Overly fancy tools that only work on custom screens look like toys, waste memory, and rot the intellect. Look at a table saw or a drill press sometime -- very functional and ergonomic tools, but rarely offered in sixteen colors. * Enough hype, pal. What does DiskSalv 3 actually get me? Well, you could look over either "advertisement" file. But what the heck, I have your attention now, so I'll summarize. DiskSalv 3 has the same basic major modes now in DiskSalv 2. Some changes are made to these: Salvage A powerful new "Set Filter..." function allows a large variety of pattern-matching operations. Any number of complex patterns can be defined, with optional Load/Save to/from disk. So you can, for instance, filter out all the commercial stuff you already have on floppy up on that bookshelf. Actions offered are inclusion, exclusion, and stop on match. Undelete This can often be done in-place, rather than as a "recover-by-copy" operation like Salvage. Validate Repair The Validate function has been folded into the Repair function, it's now a Repair-specific "Fast Scan" option. This has always been the case (eg, Validate and Repair differ only by their disk scanning function), now it's just a bit more obvious. Some new major modes have been added: Check This mode is essentially the Repair/Fast Scan (eg, Validate) operation done without any actual writing to disk. You can get a list of what needs to be fixed without actually doing the repairs. Backup This is a full or incremental backup operation, using the same enhanced filter functions, file browser, and output generator provided for the Salvage mode. Cleanup This mode "cleans" a partition of all deleted data. This makes a disk "DiskSalv-proof", for security, for release disks, or just to eliminate some past history from a disk to make future Undeletes or Salvages a bit easier to take. Map-Bad This mode does bad block mapping on a valid partition. It tests every block, and will move any failed blocks out of the way, whether allocated by the file system or not. Finally, some enhanced functions are provided to deal with partitions. As before, partitioning information can be entered by hand or found by searching a disk. In addition to loads and saves in ASCII format, Rigid Disk Blocks can now be read or written. Device level bad-block mapping is supported on new disks, with bad block lists generated manually (entered by hand) and/or via the same disk test routines used for the Map-Bad major mode.