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MASDIR - The MASter DIRectory System - Release 5.4
Description of new features in Version 5
*****************************************************************
The following MASDIR Version 5 features are described in this
supplement to the user manual.
* Release 5.4a - maintenance release - no new features. Fixed
three items: improved b&w display with /& for plasma screens,
improved display of disk free space for large partitions, and
fixed the display of moving text in the shareware version.
* Release 5.4 (5.3 has been superseded)
* New SDLCONFG.BAT is a shorter version of SDLSETUP.
* Expanded on-line HELP. Try SDL /?.
* Black and White (B&W) option for LCD, monographic, and
plasma screens. Try SDL /&.
* U option for sUbdirectories only. When U is on, A will
toggle between files and subdirectories and vice versa.
* Default sort order (Ascending/Descending) for each sort
field (Name, Date, eXtension, Size). Ascending for Name
and eXtension, descending for Size and Date. These can
be changed in SDLSETUP. '-' changes only the current field.
* Highlighted menu items indicate current toggle settings
with upper case for 'on' and lower case for 'off'. COLS and
SORT indicated by non-highlighted character.
* B for Bytes option is available at the menu but not
listed. Pressing B will toggle between 1k clusters and
sectors to get an accurate reading of the file space on
floppy diskettes.
* SDLSETUP is provided for DR DOS. See SDLSETUP information
below.
* The environment features have been made fully compatible
with 4DOS, DR DOS, and all BATch files. See description
below for use with DOS "shells".
* If no files are found that match the command line filespec,
the SDL menu is presented instead of immediately exiting to
DOS.
* A star (*) option has been added to the menu to change the
filespec to *.* without returning to DOS.
* Small increase in size to over 11K, but still considerably
smaller and faster than most sorted directory programs with
similar features.
-2-
* Free upgrade from Release 5.2. Please send $2 to cover
shipping and handling.
* Release 5.2
* Enter two file specifications on the command line.
* Enter any DOS command without exiting from SDL. The
directory that is being viewed is automatically updated if
any changes are made.
* Read the directory on a new disk without exiting from SDL.
* List only files created in a given time period such as
today, the past n days, past month, past quarter, etc.
* SET default SDL options in the environment.
* The End key is now used to SCROLL to the last screen.
* Label printing will skip over the gaps between labels.
* New menu items include All, rK, and some of the time keys.
* Improved menu driven setup program with new options such as
setting the color of the key characters in menus.
* Full documentation on disk.
* The FREE label offer is being continued. Pay the $2 S&H
charge, and select one unit of labels free.
* Up to $3 rebate for your purchased shareware disk.
* Reduced surcharge for 3.5" diskettes.
* Reduction in registration fee to $19.
* Upgrade from Version 4.3 for only $4, from 4.2 for $9.
*****************************************************************
IMPORTANT *** IMPORTANT *** IMPORTANT *** IMPORTANT *** IMPORTANT
USING SDL.COM WITH SHELLS
If you use SDL from a "shell" type program, it is a good idea
to include the following statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT:
SET SDL=S
"Why in the world would I ever want to use SDL if I am using a
shell program?" you may well ask. True, most shells display all
the filenames you might want to see on the screen constantly.
-3-
But what if you want to display some other file names briefly?
Usually, if you are using a shell, you have to change to the
directory you want to see, and the shell program has to read the
directory, rearrange the file names, and organize its display. I
have found this to be slow and awkward. Then, for example, to
get back to your working directory you have change directory
again and consume more time reread and redisplay the original
directory.
Suppose, for example, you just want to see what is on a floppy
disk. From your shell program you could just issue the DOS
command SDL A: and quickly view the contents of the disk in drive
A: without going through all the rigmarole of changing
directories in your shell. From the SDL menu, you can change the
display without exiting to DOS or back to your shell. You can
even quickly print a label or sleeve insert of the directory for
future reference. When you have seen what you want to see,
simply pressing Esc will return you immediately to the shell
exactly where you left it.
As another example, consider the case where you would like to
see just a subset of the files. For example, you would like to
see just which files you have created or changed today, or only
files with a specific extension, or maybe just the ones with the
archive bit set. In most shell programs, to change the file
filter you have to bring up a menu, select the display
configuration screen, make the changes you want, then let the
shell program do its work. When you are finished you have to go
back through the process to regain your original display. How
much easier to just issue a simple SDL command to see the files
you want, then when you exit you are automatically back to your
shell exactly where you left it. This is a much simpler
procedure to follow.
As with many registered and commercial software programs, when
it is first called during a computing session, SDL will briefly
display copyright and registration information. There is no
delay imposed, but the Cls feature will be disabled during this
first call so that the information is clearly displayed. To make
this as unobtrusive as possible, SDL remembers that it has
displayed the copyright information and does not display it again
during the session. Since a directory program may be used many
times, I feel it is important to keep it as small, fast, and
unobtrusive as possible; therefore, the following information is
provided.
The way SDL remembers is to place a few bytes of information
in the DOS environment memory area. The method used to do this
is very fast, but due to the nature of DOS it is not remembered
if SDL is run from a shell. Issuing the above SET command will
bypass the display of the copyright information and avoid this
case of amnesia.
-4-
You can make good use of this information in the environment
by including any default options for SDL that you might like.
For example, to turn the Header default off you can use
SET SDL=/H.
Any setting of the variable SDL in the DOS environment will avoid
the shell problem. See the additional information below about
using the environment to control SDL.
NOTE: In release 5.2 this environment feature was incompatible
with 4DOS and BATch files. In 5.3 these incompatibilities have
been completely removed.
*****************************************************************
"No matching file". Previous versions of SDL would exit back
to the DOS prompt if no files were found that matched the command
line specification. If this was the result of a typographical
error, you would have to reenter the correct SDL command.
Starting with Release 5.3 you will see the message "No matching
file" and the SDL menu (unless you have turned it off with the /M
option). Now you can press the * key to immediately change the
file specification to *.* to see all files in the specified or
default directory without exiting from SDL. For other new menu
keys that can be useful see the D, R, A, and K menu items
described below. The * selection will not change the effect of
any D, A, or K selections. Also, if the specified path is not
found, SDL will exit back to the DOS prompt, or to wherever it
was called from, since the * selection would do no good for an
unknown path.
*****************************************************************
Entering two file specifications (filespecs) on the command
line. For example, SDL A:*.EXE *.COM will list all .EXE and .COM
files in the same directory listing. Another example:
SDL A:*.?O? *.?X?
will list at least all .COM, .DOC, .TXT, and .EXE files in the
same listing. This is a special feature that is included in this
release on a trial basis. It may be enhanced or eliminated from
future releases.
This dual filespec option has some restrictions. You may
include a drive and/or a path with the first filespec only. The
second filespec will automatically find files in the same drive
and directory as the first. You may NOT include any path
information, not even a \ to indicate the root directory with the
second filespec. If you specify /O for dOs order, all the files
for the first filespec will be listed first, and the files for
the second filespec will follow. They will be listed in proper
order for the other sorting options.
Furthermore, you can not use some of the directory shortcuts
that are available otherwise. For example, although a single
-5-
filespec of .exe will list all *.exe files, you must include the
* if you are using dual filespecs. Similarly, although SDL A*
will list all filenames beginning with A for all extensions, with
dual filespecs you must make this entry as A*.*. In other words,
unless the files have no extensions, you must include a
specification for the name, the period (dot), and a specification
for the extension. These restrictions should not be too onerous
in those cases where being able to enter more than one filespec
is a useful feature. Please let me know your comments about this
feature.
*****************************************************************
In Version 5 a new second parameter has been added to the /D
option to specify a period of time in which the files you want to
see were created. The syntax and parameters for this option are:
/Dn, n=0,1,...9 specifies files created in the past n days.
For example, /D0 specifies only the files created on the current
day, and /D7 the past 7 days.
/DD or /dd is toDay (same as /d0).
/Df is a Fortnight, the past 14 days. Not case sensitive.
/Dm is within the current calendar month.
/DM is within the past month (28, 30 or 31 days with no
correction for Leap Year.) Notice the case sensitivity for M and
some others following in the sense that the upper-case letter
specifies a period of time greater than or equal to the lower
case letter.
/DB and /Db are Bimonthly, within 2 months or 60 days.
/DQ and /Dq are Quarterly or 3 months.
/DS and /Ds are Semiannual or 6 months.
/DY and /Dy are within the past year or 365 days.
These all also work with the reverse sort (-) parameter so
that you can see the most current files at the top of the list.
For example, use /DM- or /-DM, not /D-M. You can, of course,
also include any of the other switches, such as the /K switch to
show only those files which have had the archive bit reset since
the last backup, and /A to eliminate subdirectory names.
At the End menu (not the intermediate), the 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8,
9, M, Q, and Y keys will redisplay only the files created in that
time period similar to /Dn on the command line. (2, 4, and 6 are
reserved for the number of columns, of course.) To return to the
full directory, just press D at the next menu. These selections
are not case sensitive and will be used in the upper case sense.
*****************************************************************
Another new feature in Version 5 is the / command to permit
entering any DOS command. This shows up as /dos on the menu. At
the menu at the very end of the display press the / key. You
will be prompted to enter any command. At this point any DOS
command will be accepted including running another program such
-6-
as a text editor, LIST, LABEL, or whatever there is sufficient
memory for, even a BATch file. When you exit from the program
you have been running you will see the "Enter new command or
press return" prompt. Pressing return will return you to the SDL
directory display which may be changed, depending on the commands
you have entered. You can continue to enter DOS commands as long
as you like - until you enter an empty line by just pressing
return.
This feature is not intended to make SDL into a DOS shell,
although it has a few of the conveniences of such a shell. It is
intended to be just a convenience and must be used with a bit of
care. If, for example, you are looking at a directory and you
see a file that you would like to do something with, but you are
not ready to exit to DOS just yet, you can press / to have your
way with it. You can do such things as erase the file, LIST it
with Vernon Buerg's LIST program or other file viewer, copy it,
use an archive viewer such as SHEZ or LIST to examine it if it is
an ARC or ZIP file, LABEL the volume, or enter any legal DOS or
program command that you could enter at the DOS prompt and for
which you have sufficient memory. If, for example, you ERASE or
RENAME a file, when you press return to get your directory
display back, it will show you the changes you have made. But be
sure the directory you are looking at is the current directory on
your system, or that you include full path information with file
names - see cautions below.
If you invoke more than 2 levels of SDL you will have to exit
back the way you came. If you try to exit with Ctrl-C or Ctrl-
Break, DOS will return you to SDL at each level you have entered
until you get back to the DOS prompt.
The following comments, cautions, and reminders should be
noted when using the /dos feature:
1. Since commands are passed directly to DOS they will not
be seen by alias programs such as CED. If you want to use CED or
other aliases, make your first command COMMAND or whatever your
command processor is. This will run a secondary command
processor and give you a real DOS prompt. When you are finished
with DOS, enter EXIT to return to the SDL environment. Note that
if your operating system is DR DOS instead of MS or PC DOS, your
application command stack may be available when using the /dos
feature. This can also be useful in recalling and editing titles
for the header lines with the E option.
2. Be careful with the CD (Change Directory) command. You
can cause no harm by entering the CD command itself, but it is
easy to lose track of where you are in your directory tree. The
directory you see displayed may not be the current directory and
if you issue a destructive command such as ERASE, DEL, or COPY
you may eliminate a file you did not intend to. SDL will always
tell you which directory it is displaying unless you have
overwritten the third title line. The CD command can, however,
-7-
be very useful to explore subdirectories that you see on your
display. If you have called SDL with no file specification or
just a general file specification with no \'s or directory names,
then the display you see will be the display of the current
directory and you can safely use the CD command to explore. To
permit the most flexibility and to eliminate the "big brother"
type of hand-holding, no checks are made on the commands that you
enter. This keeps SDL's size down and gives the user maximum
flexibility.
4. It is a good idea to NOT change drives by issuing a
command such as B: from within SDL. Once SDL has been invoked,
the drive it looks at is fixed and will not change. Losing your
place by changing the default drive can be even more disastrous
than losing your place with the CD command.
5. If you are listing the files on a floppy disk and you
change disks while using /dos, SDL will automatically list the
files on the new disk when you return. But see the next feature
for a shortcut way to handle the change of floppy disks.
6. Since you can now use your favorite disk volume
labelling program from the /dos prompt, the Vol option has been
eliminated. This freed up a considerable number of bytes so that
Version 5 is not much larger than Version 4.3. In fact, most of
the increase in size is due to the addition of items to the SDL
/? on-line help display. The registered version is still under
10K.
7. If you are printing labels or inserts and you use the
/dos option, printing will be turned off to allow you to adjust
the display. The PgUp, End, All, rK, Read, and the various time
period selections will also turn off printing. You may, of
course, resume printing when you are ready.
For the most part the cautions above are not very restrictive,
mostly just common sense and good computing practices.
*****************************************************************
There is now a Read selection on the final menu. Pressing R
or r at this menu will cause the disk directory to be re-read and
a possibly new directory to be displayed. For example, suppose
you have issued the command SDL A:. While the menu is displayed
you change the diskette in the A-drive. Press R and the
directory for the new diskette will be read and displayed. As
mentioned above, if you use the /dos option when you change the
diskette, it will also cause the directory to be read, but Read
is much more convenient.
This is a convenient feature for examining and/or labelling a
series of diskettes without having to return to DOS after each
one. If you are making labels or inserts, it will also preserve
any titles you have entered from one diskette to the next. Then
if you are using DR DOS, CED or PCED, you can edit them as
necessary instead of having to type new ones for each disk.
-8-
As a side benefit of the Read capability, the A (All), K
(arKive bit), and some of the time period options (D,0,1, etc.)
will now work from the menu at the end of the display. If you
want to toggle the <DIR>'s off or on, or if you want to see only
the files with the archive bit set, just press A or K as
appropriate. The All selection is especially useful in the root
directory if it has a lot of subdirectory names that you don't
need to see.
If you are printing labels or inserts and you use any of these
options that cause the directory to be read, printing will be
turned off to allow you to adjust the display. You may, of
course, resume printing when you are ready. A benefit of this is
that titles and options that have been entered will be preserved
until there is a complete exit to DOS.
*****************************************************************
You may find the following several additional new features to
be quite useful.
Pressing End will now SCROLL to the end of the directory and
pause, leaving the last page on the screen. If printing was on,
it will be turned off before scrolling. If PgUp is then pressed,
it will jump back to the beginning of the file list. Note that
both End and PgUp turn off printing if it is on, while Home and
PgDn will print another copy of the listing.
SDL will use 6 bytes of your environment space to keep track
of whether it is active or not. If you see the DOS message "Out
of environment space" it means that you should increase the space
available. (See the Configuration, SHELL, and COMMAND topics in
your DOS manual.)
A pleasant side effect of having the SDL information in the
environment is the elimination of the copyright notice after SDL
has been used the first time. Subsequent uses of SDL during the
same session will skip the copyright notice that flashes on the
screen just above the directory display. On most machines the
copyright notice is so quickly cleared by SDL's clear screen
feature that it is not noticeable anyway, but for those slower
machines, or users who do not use the clear screen feature, this
will make a cleaner display. Note that this is the separate
initial copyright message, not the one that is in the header
which can be replaced by running SDLSETUP or turned off with the
H option. SDL does this by placing the string SDL=S in the
environment.
The copyright suppression feature does not work with some DOS
"shells", but you can work around this by including the statement
SET SDL=S in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file if you are a shell user. See
the next paragraph for additional features available by using the
SET command.
-9-
Another new feature is the setting of default command line
options (switches) in the environment. Any of the / options can
be set in the environment by using the DOS SET command to create
an SDL variable. This variable can contain a series of /
switches in the same manner you would enter them on the command
line. For example, SET SDL=/F/H in your AUTOEXEC.BAT would
toggle the disk Free space and Header switches whenever you use
SDL, effectively reversing the defaults.
Switches set in the environment are acted on before command
line switches, so you can override any of your environment
settings just as you can when you set defaults with SDLSETUP.
The toggle switches are acted on each time they are encountered,
so putting /F in the environment as above, and also including /F
on the command line would toggle the free space switch twice,
effectively leaving it unchanged.
SETting any SDL= variable in the environment will also
suppress the copyright notice.
If Labels or Tiny are selected from the Print menu, and there
are too many files to fit on one label, then form feeds will be
sent to the printer to skip over the gap between labels. This
"skip over perf" capability assumes that you have lined up the
labels properly, and that if you are using Tiny you have selected
the proper number of file rows for Tiny in SDLSETUP. This
feature is available only from the Print menu, and not when you
use /L or /I on the command line.
*****************************************************************
Changes to SDLSETUP:
SDLSETUP is now "menu driven"! This makes it much easier to
use, but it may be slower on older machines. Menus are displayed
showing the items available to be customized. You can select
specific items instead of having to scroll through each item in a
section. After each selection you will return to the menu so you
can make another selection or continue on to the next section.
If you make a menu selection then decide you don't want to
specify the item after all, you can press Esc to go on the the
next section, or CR to return to the the current menu. Some menu
selections will have more than one item that can be customized;
e.g. the SORT options are grouped together. The menu will be
displayed again after the last of these items unless you press
Esc.
Because of the branching, the menu method could be agonizingly
slow on older machines and if using DOS 2.x. However, being able
to select only those items you want to change should make it
faster overall. Because of certain problems in the older
versions of DOS, DOS 2.x is longer specifically supported. If it
-10-
works under your 2.x fine, but it is impractical to fix anything
that doesn't.
SDLCONFG is a shorter version of SDLSETUP. SDLCONFG skips all
of the defaults that you can set in the environment with the SET
SDL= command. Use SDLCONFG if all you want to do is change any
of those few defaults that cannot be specified on the command
line.
Several users have complained that the red highlighted key
letters were hard to see. You could always select no
highlighting in SDLSETUP, but now I have expanded that so that
you can specify a color you would like to see. If you
specifically select either Automatic or Color for the monitor,
then you will get a second prompt for the color you want. This
color option may not work exactly as expected if you are using
another program to set the overall colors of your display. You
may have to experiment to obtain the effect that you want.
The new "skip over perf" feature of label printing depends on
the number of rows of files you have selected for tiny print in
SDLSETUP. Additional selections have been made available to
cover a wider selection of printers.
DR DOS is now supported by SDLSETUP. A separate set of setup
BATch files is in the subdirectory (or separate ZIPped file)
DRDOS in the registered version. To run SDLSETUP under DR DOS,
copy the BATch files in DRDOS over the ones of the same name in
the original MS DOS version.
*****************************************************************
Some special perks for registrations and upgrades!
FREE labels! With each new registration you may select one
unit of labels FREE. Pay only the $2 S&H charge. Sorry, the
upgrade prices are so low that they do not include labels.
Rebate for your purchased shareware disk for new
registrations! If you have purchased a MASDIR shareware disk
from me, PC-SIG, The Public (software) Library, a user group, or
any other authorized shareware distributor, send in the original
MASDIR shareware disk and a copy of your receipt with your
registration. As a token of appreciation for trying MASDIR you
may deduct the price of the disk up to $3 from the registration
fee of $19. You must include both the disk and the invoice
showing payment.
There is also extensive new documentation available both on
disk and printed. As the documentation is completed it will be
included in a file on the disk. Because of the increase in the
size of the documentation to describe the new features, the price
of the printed documentation had to be raised. However, the
-11-
surcharge for 3.5" diskettes has been reduced, and there has been
a reduction in the registration fee.
I hope you enjoy using the new features in MASDIR Version 5.
Bob Stephan
(408) 646-1899, The Cricket BBS (408) 373-3773,
MOBYDISK on Genie, or 72357,2276 on CompuServe.