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Frozen Fish 1: Amiga
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FrozenFish-Apr94.iso
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kingfisher-2.0beta
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1994-03-29
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This is the "BETA 3" release of KingFisher 2.0. This KingFisher is
provided to you without any warrantees, either expressed or implied. This
software is a preliminary release of a package under development and may
exhibit erroneous behavior, even result in crashes. It is not a finished
product by any means.
For more detailed information on the program, please read the documentation
in the KingFisher.DOC file.
FEATURES
· Connects to a currently running KingFisher 2.0 Database Server,
· Starts up the KingFisher 2.0 Database Server if not currently running;
the KFServer must reside in the same directory as KingFisher 2.0 for
this feature to be functional.
· Allows selecting a database other than the default database,
· Resizable GadTools interface, sensitive to proportional fonts, even
with a word-wrapping and proportional font sensitive ListView,
· Display format is sensitive to database contents and will omit the
display of fields that do not exist (or are empty,)
· Forward and backward motion through the database, one fish at a time,
· Offers logical search expressions of the form
fieldname comparison constantvalue
combined with boolean operators & (AND), | (OR), and ^ (XOR), as well
as ! or ~ (NOT) for negating an expression. Expressions can be grouped
into more complex ones with the use of parentheses. Errors in the
expression are diagnosed with a small set of error messages.
Comparison operators are the common < <= > >= = (==) and != (<>)
In addition, the $ is also used to be read as "contains," i.e.
name$kingfisher
means "field name contains the string 'kingfisher'." Constantvalues
must be quoted with "" or '' if they contain any special symbol such as
& | ^ a blank space or closing parenthesis.
· Scans a single file and allows addition of its contents to the current
database,
· Handles both a KingFisher Release 1 and the new Release 2 database
format with equal grace.
BUGS
· Loses about 4272 bytes of memory each time invoked,
· Sometimes crashes with a privilige violation (8000 0008) gury; This one
hasn't bitten me in a while, but I haven't found a spot in the code
which was definitely responsible for the problem ...
· Is not always graceful or overly informative when the server is not
responsive, or when some other problem exists with the connection to
the server; I hope to clean that up a bit and make things more
informative,
· The word-wrapping code sometimes is too eager to wrap words that would
have still fit on the display; sometimes it wraps MUCH too early.
VERY NEAR FUTURE (Definitely by first week of April 1994)
· Recursively scanning a directory tree for .Product-Info, Product-Info,
or #?.pi files to be added to database,
· Following existing version links (currently only part of KingFisher
Release 1 indexed databases),
· Skipping forward and backward across disk boundaries (currently only
part of KingFisher Release 1 indexed databases),
NEAR FUTURE (Most likely late April or May)
· Quick Index based on a field in the database (usually the name) which
is used automatically if a search involves only a field so indexed,
· Saving a history of search expressions to take the place of and expand
upon the 6 fields that KingFisher Release 1 used; these will be
selectable from a ListView,
· Saving current positions in each used database so that skipping back
and forth between databases does no reset to the first fish,
· Saving position and size of (all?) windows that KingFisher opens,
· Modifying and examining flags associated with each fish,
· Assigning and modifying disk numbers to ranges of fish,
· Printing and Exporting
· User-defined display, print, and export formatting with the same power
as the built-in contents senstive display,
· Full localization,
FURTHER FUTURE (Maybe implemented during the Summer 94)
· Defining new databases interactively (i.e. where files are, how they
are split up, index file names, etc)
· Automatic printing, exporting, assigning of new flags, etc during a
search,
· Clipboard support,
· Searching within a range of fish,
· Reindexing a database (rebuilding a damaged index,)
· Status display (i.e. similar to what "KFSERVER STATUS" prints out,)
· AmigaGuide® Help just as in KingFisher Release 1,
· Viewing search results as if they were a subset of the full database,
rather than viewing matches as they occur and proceeding from there
(which is how KingFisher Release 1 does it,)
· Starting a second KingFisher client from with KingFisher to allow easy
background searches or simultaneous, side-by-side access to multiple
databases,
· Sensitivity to display aspect ratio. At this time, KingFisher 2.0 uses
a 1:1 aspect ratio for its gadgets; it will become sensitive to this in
the future and adopt a more pleasing imagery for older systems,
· Delete fish from the database that have a DELETE flag set,
· Use of a custom screen instead of only Public (or Workbench) screens,
· Iconification to the Workbench,
· Maintain multiple Search Sets (even saved on disk) to which one can
return at any time,
· User-selectable display font for the interface, rather than the use of
the default system font.
._. Udo Schuermann
( ) walrus@wam.umd.edu