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==================================================================== (C) 1992 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari RoundTables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari RoundTables on GEnie are the *official* information services of the Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem in HALF DUPLEX) 800-638-8369. Upon connection, type HHH Wait for the U#= prompt. Type XJM11877,GENIE and hit RETURN. The system will now prompt you for your information. ==================================================================== ************ Topic 12 Sun Aug 04, 1991 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 15:40 EDT Sub: DC DATA DIET The new file packer from Double Click. 211 message(s) total. ************ ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 1 Tue Dec 31, 1991 W.LORING1 [BL.A.ST] at 23:25 EST Keith, The only problem with turning DD off for use in HotWire or the desktop, is remembering to TURN IT BACK ON. I imagine that since you're 'at the source', you're using a little newer version of DD than I am. In my version, if I try to run a program that accesses a dietized file with DD off, I usually see bombs. Is there a newer version available at this point? I'm using 1.0. ...bill ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 2 Wed Jan 01, 1992 V.PATRICELL1 [Vince] at 08:34 EST Robert, I _never_ said I hardly even know DataDiet is there. I said that it doesn't require any user interaction once it is set up on the system. There are ways around the MaxiFile slowdown, one way is to turn the handler off each time you copy files in MaxiFile. Make sure you are using type A compression and terminate mode for fastest speed. When you use terminate mode, you will not have any slowdown while using any application during the session. The only time you will know DataDiet is there is when you terminate the program, and when using type A compression, this is usually very quick. The only exception is Aladdin, and I have the biggest file (INPUT.TXT) normalized. ................................Vince ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 3 Wed Jan 01, 1992 D.SCHREIBER3 at 11:24 EST Does Data Diet occasioanlly corrupt data files? First, I had quite a bit of trouble when I installed Data Diet. I got crashes and lock-ups. It was all from my C drive. I tried for a long time to pin down all the problems and located several, the cured everything by re-installing the original files. So now I keep Data Diet away from my C drive and it works OK. One day I found the dial directory of Flash had been completely corrrupted. Near the top were the words Data Diet. It's an ASCII file. All sorts of garbage characters were mixed in. Today I loaded a WordWriter file and found it similarly corrupted. Also, at the top of the file were the words Data Diet. Does anyone know what is goin on? I like Data Diet and DC Squish very much, but I can't continue with them if they put my data in jeopardy. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 4 Wed Jan 01, 1992 B.SALDANA1 [BOB] at 13:08 EST Vince- Your lucky you know how to juggle dd on your system. Some people end up with the strangest results. It isn't all those goofy things you have to do turn this on, turn that off,flush etc. My idea of real time compression is compress everything and kick back and know I don't have a worry at all because everytime I access a file it runs at a standard rate and not slow as molasses. It doesn't have to work fast just standard. The real benefit being uncorrupted compressed files with more space on my disk. I guess you can't encode the files but how about encoding the squished file so that dd could run as an application. The way squish will hold an old file by changing it to xyz have an option to change it to prd. or acd. Then when installed as an application just choose *.d files to run dd. Anyway it's one step to many to be denied real time access from a disk when you boot from a hard drive. I respect my harddrive and value time I've carefully spent to load it. D.SCHREIBER3 Does Data Diet occasionally corrupt files? Only when you fail to manage it properly and you make a fatal mistake. What you saw was probably DC trying to throw in some subliminal advertising. Data Diet 602%&%*&%$#@#$^^$*I^^*)P%*&*U()P_(_+_*&&@ ^*()(_)__%)*$&*&@R&I(&*)_*+_)(*(&*@&^e7172#*&*^)_+<G>. Bob ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 5 Wed Jan 01, 1992 JEFF.W [ST Sysop] at 14:04 EST D.SCHREIBER3 - Is it possible that you are trying to use Dietized files with the Data Diet Handler turned off? This may be consistant with the problem you describe. Make sure that the Data Diet Handler is on or make sure to Normalize your files before using them while the Data Diet Handler is off. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 6 Wed Jan 01, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 15:36 EST Vince; You're complaining about the speed of DD, but I have to wonder how you expect a compression program running in real time to not slow you down. Have you looked at programs available on other platforms? I just installed Stacker on a 12mhz 286. Comparable results to DD and it slowed the system down as much if not more to DD. With the adition, however, or the 16bit Stacker Card (Let's add another $100 to the price tag) it is now almost transparent. The software was available without the card from Computability for $79, with the card $175. Can we expect a software answer to data compression to keep up with an uncompressed system? I think not. If you didn't expect any system slow down under DD, you need to research your purchases better. On the other hand... Maybe the guys at DC can come up with a DD plug in board to sit under the 68000 and make DD scream <g> Bob ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 7 Wed Jan 01, 1992 F.OLIVAS [Fred O.] at 21:37 EST Dear Double Click, I have a problem with Data Diet. I've been using it on all my files (except those recommended to not dietize) and haven't had any problems since the Atari Glendale show (where I ordered it (it arrived a few weeks later)), and haven't experienced any sort of problems until recently. Aladdin couldn't archive the proper files and it would bomb out (two bombs always) and send me to the desktop. Fleet Street Publisher, upon quiting, gives me TOS eror #9. I'm quite sure that Data Diet is causing me these problems because after trying everything else I could think of I decided to normalize these directories with the problems and now all is well. Hmmmm... Any ideas or improvements or suggestions gentlemen? Fred Olivas ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 8 Wed Jan 01, 1992 R.JOHNSON [Robert] at 23:22 EST Vince, I did (now do) use 'A' type compression and in terminate mode. No complaints about that. My _only_ complaint was the long wait while in 'origional size'. Well, that and the fact that _something_ ate a 1+meg file that I had in Aladdin. I _used_ to have from file number 7000 to 21,000 in my Aladdin data file. _Something_ toasted it. So now \Aladdin\ is in my INF file. ------------------------------- Gunner, In all fairness, Vince isn't (wasn't) the one complaining about the speed of DD. That was me. And I wasn't complaining about the compression speed, just the amount of time it took to display a file directory in LGFS. And yes, I did expect a system slowdown, I just didn't expect to see it where I did. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 9 Thu Jan 02, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:38 EST All- Look for an update- note, not upgrade- to the DD modules this month (1/92) along with a new demo version. I am planning to release the update as a "patch update" with the necessary file(s) uploaded to the services and the DC BBS, which will have the online reg. ready by then. Good news is that it is now compatibile with these programs: Dr. T's KCS Omega (and possibly other MIDI apps) and Outline ART. Also, operation in the MultiGEM environment has been much improved. As usual there will be full details in the included README. R.JOHNSON- Auto control of programs (like DD Control) is a planned addition to the handler via the INF file. Look for this in a future version. - keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 10 Thu Jan 02, 1992 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 21:30 EST Fred, I have had similar mysterious problems with Word Up 3.0 which disappear upon normalization. Then if I re-Dietize the folder, the problems are gone . . . until the next time they mysteriously reappear. I believe the problems may be related to turning off the computer without quitting WordUp first, but I'm not certain. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 11 Thu Jan 02, 1992 R.JOHNSON [Robert] at 22:03 EST Gunner, I installed DD again, and so far I am quite happy with it. Went from having 25 megs free to 47. No too shabby. Keith, Thanks for the info. Now a _slight_ problem I am having. When using OSS Personal Pascal, I have one file that just refuses to compile/link properly unless I disable that drive from being dietized. I have tried it with all the associated files Normalized, and Dietized, but I have to disable DD temporarly to do that one file. I have other programs that compile/link just fine. The obj code is 100k+ for that file. Not blaming the program, cause it does work with the other files I have tried, just fishing for ideas. Oh, the error my compiler returns is ' Error in random access ' or something like that when trying to produce the obj code. It does produce code, but when running the program, it crashes. Duhhhh?? -- Robert A. Johnson -- 7:38:00 pm MST -- Thursday, January 2, 1992 -- El Paso, Texas ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 12 Thu Jan 02, 1992 D.SCHREIBER3 at 22:10 EST Whew! Data Diet did NOT corrupt my data files, contrary to what I suggested here a couple of days ago. My apologies to the great programmers at Double-Click for any concerns I might have caused. What happened was that I was trying to load data files after inadvertently turning off Data Diet. They were loaded into Word Writer (and the dial directory file was loaded into Flash) as compressed DD files - therefore ugly- looking gibberish. As soon as I turned on Data Diet again, the files were loaded in an uncompressed form and were fine. (Now, wouldn't it be interesting to understand all those weird characters in the compressed DD files and figure out what they represent in comparison to the originals ...)m475;1 ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 13 Fri Jan 03, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:09 EST All, Point of Interest: If you ever load a dietized file and you see 'DIET' as the first four characters [and the file has nothing to do with weight loss ;) ], then the handler is probably _off_. R.JOHNSON, OSS Pascal is one of the few programs that has a problem with one of the associated "save" data files being dietized. The solution, for now, is to either exclude the extender or filename in the INF file. - keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 14 Fri Jan 03, 1992 R.JOHNSON [Robert] at 20:26 EST Keith, I went back and compiled another one of my programs that generates 100K+ obj code. It wont work right either. Anything less than 100k seem to work fine. Weird. I tried excluding the obj code, but no luck. And yes, I did reboot after changing the INF file. :-) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 15 Tue Jan 07, 1992 F.OLIVAS [Fred O.] at 00:32 EST Dear Double Click, As a PS to my previous message, I'm taking back my statement that I thought that Data Diet was causing me my file error problems. All was well until today (Monday 6th) when I got back the Aladdin error message: Disk Full - Saving To Archive. As you recall, I normalized these files because of this error and here it is again. Sorry guys but it's not your fault. Back to square one. Fred Olivas ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 16 Tue Jan 07, 1992 J.H.CARROLL [Jon] at 01:43 EST I must be one of those elite types that came back from the Xmas holidays having bought DC Data Diet and MultiGEM. I've read in a number of places that the two don't work together. I read this AFTER installing the two and for the most part, things SEEM to work. What exactly is the problem? Jon ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 17 Tue Jan 07, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 18:42 EST Jon Carroll- DD and MultiGEM do not function seamlessly together. There is an update to be posted this month that I think will address some of the problems. If I am not mistaken, the WORK dir not being cleaned up correctly was the main problem. Please correct me if I am mistaken... ;) - keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 18 Tue Jan 07, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 19:43 EST I have my Diamondback II upgrade, now, and I'm about ready back up my partion C and give DataDiet a serious try. I'm wondering about a problem I have, though, and I guess I want to make sure 1)it wasn't due to a previous attempt with DD or 2)if it was, I can't get out of what I got into. It appears that all of the programs on certain hard drive partitions give a TOS 35 error when I try to run them, and data files, such as those for LDW POWER, give a message such as wrong file format or something of that sort. Could this be due to a previous attempt to use DD? Perhaps with some sort of incorrect procedure? If so, is there a way to fix it? I tried to Normalize, and all the file names scanned past on the screen, but it appeared that nothing had changed after the task was finished. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 19 Tue Jan 07, 1992 S.GOLD6 [Steve] at 21:02 EST Fred, i'm not sure, but if the drive were DATADIET.WRK folder is located does not have enough space you will get all sorts of problems. I have had the same experience even with normalized files. Steve ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 20 Wed Jan 08, 1992 R.ROSADO [Lyre/DG CL] at 01:27 EST Ken, You know, I've been getting TOS #35 alot lately also. I haven't mentioned it until now because I haven't had the time to see exactly what is causing this error. For the most part I am seeing this answer upon exiting various programs. Including Aladdin, MWC Resource Construction Set, Word Writer. Another thing that I've seen is my system lock-up. For instance, their have been times when I've tried to save an Aladdin BB message and my HD will just spin. The message is never written to it. It was particularly annoying the other day. I was creating a survey for a group I'm involved with and after writing 20+ questions and the instructions (about 150 lines or more of text al together at that point) Aladdin locked up. Three other attempts later I just used Word Writer to create an ASC file - which worked fine. Richard ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 21 Wed Jan 08, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 17:20 EST TOS Error #35: This is a 'Handle pool exhausted' GEMDOS error. Running out of handles is a very remote happening, especially not common with the mentioned programs. You say this is happening on exit? Could someone give me a contents description of their AUTO folder and ACCs? It seems as though there is a conflict with another resident program... - keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 22 Wed Jan 08, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 19:02 EST Keith, My problem didn't happen at exit. Something has happened to some programs and data files. I don't know what. Text files flash by on the monitor with a lot of extended character set characters. I thought if they had been accidentally Dietized while I was experimenting with DD, Normalizing would correct the problem. I understand programs can't be Dietized, but I guess their support files can be. I thought Normalizing everything in the folder would, well, normalize things. The file names flash by, but I don't know if that means anything is actually being done to the files. The programs still give me TOS error #35 afterward. I'm going to do some backing up, then install DD, and try running some of these programs with it turned on. The only ACC I'm running is MULTIDESK DELUXE, with UIS-III, G+PLUS, SETUP630, and XCONTROL set to run as resident programs. My AUTO folder has CACHE100, DESKMG33, DIAB630, FSMGDOS, G+PLUS, ICDTIME, MACCEL3, SDUMP, SERPTCH2, SETUP630, and UIS-III. I don't mean to blame DD. I just don't know what else could modify files so extensively. I'll let you know if I turn up anything. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 23 Wed Jan 08, 1992 DOUG.W at 20:26 EST TOS error #35 is "Not an executable file" which basically means your program file is corrupted. --Doug (Keith, your description is for GEMDOS error -35, not TOS error 35) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 24 Wed Jan 08, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 23:13 EST Keith, I've learned a little more about the TOS error #35 problem. Perhaps we should be in another topic, as it appears now not to have anything to do with DD. I downloaded a bunch of files here, and extracted the LZH ones with DC_XPLUS and the ARC ones with DCEXTR10. I don't seem to have any problem with the ARC ones, but some of the LZH ones, for sure, are messed up in some way. When I try to read some of the TXT files from the desktop, black squares flash by on the screen, and I get a jingly sound, but I can load them into EdHak and read them OK. The DOC files are full of shift-number characters, etc., and are unreadable by any method. Some of the programs run, and some give error #35. One of these was the file "WINNER", the MSTE demo, that took about two hours to download. I think the problem files may be LZH [L5H] files that are having something done to them by DC_XPLUS, but are not being properly extracted. Is that likely? I have LZH201I, now, and will try it on some of these. Unfortunately, the shell (or 2) I have to run it won't extract properly, so I may have to use it to extract its own shell. This doesn't answer the question of what happened to other previous working programs and files that seem to indicate some of the same symptoms--garbled text, TOS error #35, etc. I'll let you know if I learn something, and I know you'll do the same. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 25 Thu Jan 09, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 15:07 EST Doug W., Thanks for pointing that out about TOS Error #35! I mistakenly looked in my GEMDOS reference stuff (knowing in the back of my mind the infamous TOS error 35/bad program) but all I could find, obviously, was the negative error stuff. Where are the TOS errors listed in the Dev. Docs? All, To those having TOS error 35s, could there be a problem with Squish interacting with DD versus just a problem with DD? Trying to nail this issue down is becoming hit-or-miss... ;) Ken Van, It is definitely possible that an archive utility that does not properly handle the latest LZH stuff could create "bad" files. Thus an extracted program could cause a TOS error 35. - keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 26 Thu Jan 09, 1992 B.SALDANA1 [BOB] at 22:47 EST Ken Vandellan- As far as I know DcXplus doesn't extract Lh5 files. At least I haven't had any luck doing so. I've tried even cancelling the abort on a bad header config. which usually extracts "noisy" d/l's but no luck. I've suggested adding an F5 button to locate lzh(lh5) for those type files but haven't had a response. Also It would be neat to be be able to arc,zip,zoo, and lzh,h5 files with dcx- plus since it is the eziest extracting interface on the market. Arc.shel 3.0 works o.k. for extracting Lh5 files. As long as the directory wasn't munged you can delete bad data on a disk and try another extracter. Bob Saldana ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 27 Thu Jan 09, 1992 R.ROSADO [Lyre/DG CL] at 22:48 EST For the record, I have 2.4 megs available on my C drive - where DATDIET.WRK is kept. Richard ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 28 Fri Jan 10, 1992 R.ROSADO [Lyre/DG CL] at 00:46 EST Keith, Ok, here is how my AUTO folder is set-up: FOLDR60 .PRG DESKMG33.PRG STSELECT.PRX (Needs to be removed since I've got DESKMG33) PINHED18.PRG M-CACHE .PRX CODEKEYS.PRX MOUSDOUB.PRG UIS_II .PRG G+PLUS .PRX DATADIET.PRG MAXIFIX .PRG (Maxifile patch for use with Aladdin) DATADIET.BAK COPILOTC.PRX STARTGEM.PRG (To start NEODESK) COPILOT .INF DATADIET.INF For the sake of arguement I am running on a MegaST2 running the original Mega TOS. I have a SupraDrive 30M HD, an Alfa Data Mouse, QuickComm 2400e modem. I have the Deskcart cartridge set up also. Color and Mono Atari monitors. Hmmmm, also for the sake of arguement, I normally only have Maxifile, Data Diet, Deskcart and Codekeys running as far as DA's are concerned. BTW, besides the TOS 35 error, I've noticed in Aladdin that I tend to loose characters when breaking a sentence from one paragraph to start a new paragraph (although I haven't seen this lately). ANother thing that Aladdin is good for is suddenly locking up. For instance while I was using it earlier I got four bombs - at that point I was writing a letter and had paused about a minute trying to think how I was going to phrase something when this occured. Richard PS: Sorry about all the stuff I gave you, but I figured it couldn't hurt. I think I've got Squish set to TPA for all of the PRG's. My AUTO PRG's are also squished. PPS: I'm not sure if DD or Squish is responcible for any of this, but - no offense - it seems like the only program that might be. But then, I don't know enough about programming so... :) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 29 Fri Jan 10, 1992 KWERNER [Kurt] at 20:07 EST R.ROSADO, -IF- I remember correctly, (Its been awhile) UIS should be run last (or almost last) in your auto folder. Also, I think I ran into problems if UIS ran before G+Plus. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. Kurt ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 30 Sat Jan 11, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 10:01 EST Keith, I've now discovered that, as far as have checked, all of the programs on one of my SyQuest cartridges give the TOS Error #35, and all of the text files give characters dinging their way up the screen. I have all of the programs on their original floppies (LDW Power, 1st Word, WordFlair II, etc.), but wish I could recover the data files. I can't imagine what could have happened to an entire cartridge. I Squished quite a few programs, but I'm not sure that included the programs on this cartridge. It is also possible that I Dietized the cartridge while experimenting with DD. Could Squish and DD interact somehow? Squish tells me the programs are not squish programs, and Normalize, as I mentioned, scrolls through the program names, but apparently does nothing to them. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 31 Sat Jan 11, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 11:59 EST Check your DATADIET.INF file in your auto folder. If you have Excluded the partition you are trying to normalize (or even just that folder), Data Diet will not perform any function there. If so, no problem. Delete that line from your INF file, reboot and normalize the partition. If this is the case, DD does at is told and looks at all the files, but it just slips past them because it has already been told not to alter them... Hope this does the trick for ya... Gunner ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 32 Sun Jan 12, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 18:10 EST Gunner, I haven't set up an INF file, but maybe there's a default one. I'll check it out. Thanks for the suggestion. I got a little scared when Keith suggested some sort of interaction between Squish and DD. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 33 Sun Jan 12, 1992 R.ROSADO [Lyre/DG CL] at 20:13 EST Kurt, Thanks for the tip. I'll try it and see what happens over the next few days. Richard ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 34 Mon Jan 13, 1992 MUSE [Tomas] at 02:58 EST Well, it's 3 or 4 months after the installation of DC Data Diet and my hard disk is full. Maybe I'll have to go for that new drive after all? I recently switched to "Find Next File: Original Size" for compatibility's sake with my backup program. I seem to have saved an average of 21% of my drive space. Actually, it's somewhat less than that as I don't have two of my partitions compressed. Still, it has opened up over 8 megs. ===Tomas=== ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 35 Mon Jan 13, 1992 D.SCHREIBER3 [David Schr.] at 19:17 EST DataDiet and DCSquish are not making me a happy camper. I set Suish to work on my on my C drive today (something I had promised myself never to do again after having to spend the better part of a day cleaning up the mess the last time I did it) and I have lots of headaches. I don't know why FormDoIt doesn't work, since I didn't Squish it and it's alrady in a PFXPak already in a PFXPak form. But the main problem is with Data Diet. It keeps booting with a message telling me that it can't find its WORK direrctory. I've tried everything I can gifure out to do to make it happy. I've looked through the manual. Nothing is getting it back. In the meantime, I cannot access any of of my data files (e.g. all my word pro files are now unusable). What is the quick solution to this situation? ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 36 Mon Jan 13, 1992 P.CARMACK [CASMOCK] at 19:18 EST Would it be possible to make DD intelligent in the next version? I mean, if I'm copying between two dietiezed partitions, then DD shouldn't bother decompressing and recrompressing files. That would be a real improvement. Otherwise, thumbs up. I use type B compression on a TT w/ two 50 megs HDs. DD is pretty much transparent except w/ really huge files. Even then, it smokes much faster that I'd expected. Great prg guys! BTW, is there any chance of seeing an improved 68030 version of DD? I mean, is there any chance of seeing DD take full advantage of the 68030(32 bit) and caches? ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 37 Mon Jan 13, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 21:33 EST Keith, It appears that all of the files that are messed up on my SyQuest cartridge have been compressed in some way. I guess if they were Dietized they would read 0 bytes, wouldn't they? If that's the case, something else happened to them. (DiamondBack compression?) If Dietization is a possibility, would you be willing and able to verify that for me? I could GEmail at text file to you. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 38 Tue Jan 14, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:19 EST David Schreiber, For best results Squishing files, I would turn off DD since Squish searches all files to see if they are executable- causing DD to uncompress data files along the way. Regretfully, this was an oversight in Squish which needs to be remedied. As for the missing WORK dir, I suggest that you do an integrity check of your partitions first. Next, boot up with DATADIET.ACC since it will also attempt to create the WORK dir, but this is doubtful to help since the handler should _always_ succede at creating the WORK dir on fixed disks. If all else fails, boot a floppy with a ramdisk (for the WORK dir) and DD to get at your data... P.CARMACK, So you think DD is dumb, huhhh? ;) Oh, you meant the copy intelligence... Here is a brief scenario for a copy operation: 1) Fopen source 2) Fread source 3) Fclose source 4) Fcreate destination 5) Fwrite destination 6) Fclose destination There is no easy way to know that this is a 'copy' operation versus just a 'save' operation since steps 4-6 look like a 'save'. I wish there was a simple way to detect copies, but I have not come up with one yet. Presently DD is optimized for small code size (as are all my programs not like some other's), so I would think that the instruction cache is helping tremedously. Also, data searches are being helped by the data cache during compression. Now then, I would have to study the 030 instruction set to see where tweaks can be made, but there probably would only be a small return... We'll see if I ever get my promised SST board from Mr. Small, then further R&D can be done. Ken Vandellen, You can easily tell if a file is dietized by turning _OFF_ the handler and using a file editor to look at the file. You will see the first four (4) characters 'DIET' if the file is dietized. By all means feel free to send a sample for me to study! - keith Category 30, Topic 12 Message 40 Wed Jan 15, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 22:09 EST Thanks, Keith, I'll check a few files with an editor. Handy to have such a clear label! d8^) This thing has me baffled. I'll let you know what I find out, but it will be several days before I can get to it, probably. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 41 Thu Jan 16, 1992 J.CARTER14 [John Carter] at 00:07 EST Just got Data Diet a week ago and think it is great, gained over 6 meg. ( lots of text files/database files ). I just picked up a copy of PC magazine in which they reviewed some compression programs for the IBM. Boy if someone thinks that Data Diet need some managing, read the review, these programs mess around with they way the info is written to the disk. Since files are written to the disk in chunks of 512 bytes, there might be wasted space if a file only takes up a few bytes of the 512. These compression programs utilize that wasted space, which in turn smashes files back to back. This is ok as long as you don't mess around with the files at the sector level. They said that disk caches/de-fragmenters/and sectors editors are in -compatible. These progams also require extended drives to be created which is used for the compression. If you want more info it is on page 261 January 28th issue. These programs sound like a pain in the butt. Does anyone know if that megadisk from alpha systems is still available?? (The ramdisk cart with battery back-up) Just thought that that would be a good thing to use with Data Diet, 1 meg of (or 512k) ram to use as the work dir while still retaining all computer memory (not setting up a computer ram disk) Anyone know how to build one???? This would be a good project. John Carter ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 42 Thu Jan 16, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 18:26 EST John Carter, Thanks for the kudos. Since PCs use MS-DOS (a relative of GEMDOS, both based loosely on CPM) they are somewhat restricted in the method available to do realtime data compression. Most force the user to setup a virtual drive which is just a large contiguous file on a drive with a device driver to handle low level access of compressed data. For the various reasons you pointed out, these utilities (ie Double Disk, SpeedStor and Stacker) have drawbacks in operation but seem to have quite a following. I haven't evaluated the latest versions of each, but I hear they are finally improving speedwise while still purporting doubling of space. Data Diet began as a little "hack" (Squishem) back in 1990. There were hurdles that could not be overcome in the original design and was shelved until early 1991. DD has always been a file level- versus device level- compression program that requires a _heap_ more logic to coexist in a system than the PC counterparts. I look back at the DD project and sorta wish I had at least attempted their approach on the ST thus possibly saving R&D&S time, but the end results are comparatively night-and-day for the end user... Obviously there are drawbacks to whatever solution is used, but the bottom line is functionality+usefulness of the end product- things that I think DD easily delivers! - keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 43 Thu Jan 16, 1992 E.KRIMEN [Ed Krimen] at 21:10 EST For the next version of Data Diet, how about a small indicator in one of the upper corners of the screen (user selectable, of course) indicating if the Data Diet handler is on? Perhaps a "DD" indicating it's on. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 44 Fri Jan 17, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:36 EST Ed Krimen, The indicator is a good idea, but compatibility with other readouts/indicators is a touchy issue. There is a myriad of corner stuff to deal with- corner clocks, speed indicators and spinning objects to name a few. Suggestions are definitely welcome for this one! ;) - keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 45 Sat Jan 18, 1992 E.KRIMEN [Ed Krimen] at 01:22 EST Keith, Yeah, I agree about the corner positioning, since I have a spinning Fuji in the left corner and a couple of eyes watching my mouse in the right corner. :^) But an indicator would be really nice. I'm not thinking of anything huge, but perhaps only a few pixels wide somewhere. What about just a black square about three pixels high and wide in the farthest point in the upper right corner? (Or even the left?) One of the hard drive drivers for the Mac puts a very small indicator in the upper left corner for drive access; it's a triangle with only a couple of pixels that change when the drive is being accessed. Or, how about three pixels to make the corner of the screen look curved instead of square? A good brainstorming session is in order, nonetheless. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 47 Tue Jan 21, 1992 B.SALDANA1 [BOB] at 00:37 EST keith- I kinda sorta wish I never woulda bought data diet Ifa I'da woulda known I woulda hada stay here to aska WHERE'S my Refund! What's that matter don't you think the data diet disk and manual I sent back to you in October is worth $59.95? Bob Saldana P.S. It would be interesting to have a hardware solution to data compressing on the Atari Platform thus relieving the data diet of it's endless disk intensive unpredictable operation. Let me know if you need a unbiased beta tester.<G> ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 48 Tue Jan 21, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 17:49 EST I need to find a Data Diet user that owns C-Lab's Notator. Yes, I know about the incompatibility... ;) Please leave e-mail. Thanks, Keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 49 Tue Jan 21, 1992 J.HOCK at 18:25 EST Keith. I am having trouble getting DD to IGNORE my CPX files. I have my DD info file set to ignore the folder the CPXs are in, also I put CPX as an extension to ignore in my DD info file. Still everytime I boot up, I find them all in the DD work directory. I previously asked why I can't create that work directory on any drive but C. I still can't. have gone over the manual thoroughly, rerun DD as APP to reconfigure it, but no go. even checked the DD PRG to make sure it was set to read/write and it is. Any more ideas.? and when will the patch or whatever it will be called be uploaded, and I wonder if it would be of any help with this problem. Other than that, the program seems fine, no scrambled files or any trouble. Oh, also when I do configure it, and sometimes change from Dietsized to Normal size files in that selector, it saves that info fine and its that way on reboot, now if we can just figure out why it likes the default boot settings. Jack ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 50 Tue Jan 21, 1992 V.PATRICELL1 [Vince] at 21:50 EST Jack, To change the work directory, try this. First make sure DATADIET.PRG is in your auto folder. Copy DATADIET.APP from your master disk to your root directory and run it. Click on the configure option and you will see the work directory line that is editable. Clear the existing path and type in the desired path for your work directory (Mine is E:\DDWORK). Then click on save to save the configuration. Exit the config menu and exit the acc and choose to rename the APP to ACC. After exiting, reboot your computer and you should have the new work directory. Good luck! ................................Vince ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 51 Wed Jan 22, 1992 C.MONTGOMERY at 07:59 EST Does anyone know if it's safe to use Hark Disk Sentry with DD Thanks, Charlie @ Design for Print ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 52 Wed Jan 22, 1992 J.HOCK at 20:48 EST Bill. Thats what I am doing. Its as if it is not saving it to the DD prg in the auto folder. Its no big thing since I have room on drive C. its just that it should be saving it properly and its not. Its as if the default was write protected somehow, even though the prg file itself is not. It may be something about my setup , but will have to investigate further. But thanks for the reply. Jack ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 53 Thu Jan 23, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 17:21 EST Jack Hock, I think you are overlooking one step, you will need to normalize the CPXs for DD to truly "ignore" them in addition to the INF changes. Presently DD is doing its job of uncompressing the dietized files when they are accessed. If that doesn't help, please e-mail me your INF file. With regards to your WORK dir problem, please make sure that DATADIET.PRG is not in the same directory as DATADIET.APP when you configure the handler in the AUTO folder. Worst case scenario is to get out a file editor and look for the path string and edit it... :) The patch update is scheduled to be uploaded next week. Charlie Montgomery, DD has no reported problems with Hard Disk Sentry. HD Sentry bypasses GEMDOS to do most of its work, getting data at the disk level for operation. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 54 Fri Jan 24, 1992 C.MONTGOMERY at 07:58 EST Keithl, thanks for the info on Hard Disk Sentry. Charlie @ Design for Print ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 55 Fri Jan 24, 1992 M.SILVERSTE3 [SYNCHRON] at 09:48 EST I'm experiencing some wierd problems when running my 2.5 meg 1040 ST with Rainbow TOS. I have TOS 1.0 in ROM and I occasionally use a bootable image of Rainbow on floppy for things like MultiGem, incremental backups, etc. My setup at boot time includes FATSPEED,PINHEAD,DATADIET, and Super boot in that order in which I invoke whatever other TSR's/DA's I need (A typical setup includes HOTWIRE, ICD's Timeset, Codekeys and Multidesk Deluxe). DD is setup with Compression B and the 'T' option and runs fine when I am using TOS 1.0. However, when I use the Rainbow off of floppy, the DD handler will install but when accessing it as either a Program or DA (under Multidesk) it can't find the handler and a dialog box pops up indicating there's no DATADIET.WRK directory (it searches on the floppy too and I've tried putting the DD Master disk in the drive at that point also). As a resident DA in the system, usually, it works OK after this message but there are times where it really doesn't get installed (i.e., No matter how many times I turn the handler off, it stays on). Because of this dilemma, I don't use Rainbow that much thinking that there is an incompatability problem with Data Diet and I don't feel secure having it compress files on the fly with these messages coming up. I am also noticing (under Rainbow) that files in the Work directory are not getting deleted when they are supposed to and I have to manually do this myself. Please understand that the Rainbow image on floppy is totally legitimate and I got it straight from my local dealer since I didn't feel it necessary to spend 70 bux on new chips/installation. Thanx, Mike. Be in Synch with the Synchron from Camarillo, CA!! Datestamp: Friday, January 24, 1992 Timestamp: 6:44:08 am ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 56 Fri Jan 24, 1992 JEFF.W [ST Sysop] at 12:16 EST Synchron - Get rid of that disk-based TOS 1.4. If you didn't receive it directly from Atari under their developer support program, it's illegal. Even so, it is not the final version of TOS 1.4 which is available only on ROMs and cannot be supported by Atari or Atari's developers. It is my understanding that even if your disk-based TOS 1.4 was created directly from legit TOS 1.4 chips, you'll still run into problems. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 57 Fri Jan 24, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:18 EST Synchron, I would try your setup without FATSPEED or ICD's Timeset, since I don't have any feedback on compatibility with those two programs. I will let someone else touch your TOS IMG statement... ;) - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 58 Sat Jan 25, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 01:27 EST Mike First be advised that TOS on disk is strictly stolen software regardless of who gave it to you. Second be advised that the "Disk" version of Rainbow TOS that is available on pirate boards for download is not safe to use. Finally, DD doesn't like Multi-Gem... Gunner ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 59 Sat Jan 25, 1992 J.HOCK at 23:26 EST Keith. Your message number 53 to me, hit the nail right on the head. I Normalized those pesky CPX's and now they are ignored, and I also found that I had a copy of Datadiet.prg in my root directory, as well as the one in the auto folder. Deleted the one in the root directory, and now I am able to put my Datadiet.wrk folder on any partition I want to. Thanks for the help. I now am going back and read the manual and see how I overlooked this solution. :-) Thanks again. Jack ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 61 Mon Jan 27, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 22:12 EST Keith, I just read a post in the Diamondback II topic that the versions are not downward compatible. I suspect that the SyQuest cartridge with the problems was a backup cartridge, unlabeled, with compressed files that the new version of DBII cannot recognize as compressed, although they definitely were compressed somehow. I've asked for help there. I'll let you know what happens. In the meantime, just put me on hold. Thanks for your help and patience, and I apologize for any inconvenience. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 62 Tue Jan 28, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 17:56 EST Ken Vandellen, Looking at the sample file you sent me, led me to think that the file was compressed but origin unknown. Good luck getting your situation straightened out! Glad it wasn't Data Diet... :) By the way, like Squish, DD will always be backwards compatible with any changes to compression scheme. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 63 Tue Jan 28, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 18:23 EST All, 1.0b update: Look for the 1.0b patch update to be opened soon. The filename is DDUPD10B.ARC (#22479). Enjoy! A Data Diet 1.0b DEMO will be posted later this week. Notator user: Still looking for someone that uses DD and Notator (not in conjuction of course). I know there's gotta be _one_ out there... :) * NOTICE: DD BETA TESTERS NEEDED * Now that the update is out the door, I need to enlist some DD users to be beta testers for the upcoming upgrade scheduled for release in a few weeks. Please leave e-mail with basic system stats and your postal mailing address if interested. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 65 Thu Jan 30, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 14:53 EST All, I neglected to mention one thing in the DD Update 1.0b docs/program: 'Insert _registered_ MASTER disk' Seems the "registered" part (or lack thereof) is causing problems for some with getting the update done... - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 66 Fri Jan 31, 1992 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 10:03 EST My DD.APP won't change its name to DD.ACC even when I select "Yes" from the alert box that asks if I want it to change its name. I have two ST systems and it wouldn't change its name on either system. No big deal, I just manually changed the name. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 67 Fri Jan 31, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:22 EST Fairweather [David], DD.APP "name problem": I think you overlooked part of the READ_ME.NOW file (in DDUPD10B.ARC) which mentions that DD.APP needs to be renamed to DATADIET.APP- same with DD_TOOLx.APP (where x is 0 or A) to DD_TOOLS.APP. DATADIET.APP/ACC looks for itself with the filename DATADIET.A??, so the search was failing with DD.APP/ACC. The update procedure required DATADIET.APP to be named DD.APP since there would have been two (2) DATADIET.DIF files... - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 68 Sun Feb 02, 1992 R.KELLEY1 at 10:33 EST This is in reference to the TOS 35 ERROR. From the days Before I owned DD. I had a hard drive partition trashed, even listing files to the screen showed stuff from other files. This happened after my Second use of Michtron's Hard Drive Turbo Kit. All seemed to go well, but afterward, nothing would run. Just TOS ERROR 35 instead. Nautrally I am a bit reluctant to re-run Turbo to defrag my drives. I have version 1.3 of Jan, 1989. I bring this up just as another possible reason this error might be appearing for you. In other words, might you be running something else that is either conflicting with DD or just doing it all on its own (like it did for me)? BoB ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 69 Sun Feb 02, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 13:11 EST Got the patch installed and it works fine! Thanks for the easy upgrade path, beats the hell out of mailing disks back and forth. By the way, I for one appreciate the program only reading my write protected original disk instead of writing to it, always makes me sweat when somthing has to write to my original... Gunner ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 70 Mon Feb 03, 1992 M.SILVERSTE3 [SYNCHRON] at 10:17 EST To Gunner: As I stated before, my local dealer sold me what he says is a "legitimate" Rainbow TOS 1.4 disk (it has the Atari logo, address, copyright, everything) and a little pocket manual. I was there the other day and he said that this is a direct copy of Rainbow TOS ROMS and that there are a couple of programs that work with TOS 1.0 but will cause some problems with this disk version. FATSPEED was only meant to work with TOS 1.0, 1.2 so this is why it doesn't get installed with Rainbow. And Hotwire won't install either because the Codeheads look for something directly in the ROMS which isn't on the disk (it runs fine as a program, though). So he gave me a choice: $70 for the chips and installation (with no warranty if something screws up) or half price for the disk. I chose the latter because I'm happy with 1.0 for most things (Neodesk provides more features than Rainbow anyway) and 1.4 is good for disk backups and added graphics acceleration (I'm not a speed freak anyway.) Getting back to this topic, Keith, I've noticed that the 1A version of DD has caused my ST to go nuts! Practically every Codehead program I own (i.e. Hotwire, Codekeys) bombs during installation as well as NEOLOAD.PRG I've done everything the dox said: inserted Master disk and used fileselector to update all necessary files. Each one would have the same file size as what's stated in the dox (1A handler is 10766 bytes). All I know is something is definitely wrong and I have to fix my C partition all the time with Toolkit or Cleanup since clusters are being lost. Also, it looks like the original handler (9742 bytes) won't work with DD Tools 1B (13214 bytes) since the 1B version doesn't recognize a 'dietized' file. I suggest when you update several programs, they should be backward compatible with older versions. Keith, I guess you're not joking about need of beta testers. If I've did something wrong, lemme know cause I've gone back to the original 1A version. I'm still looking forward to MIDI (DR. T ) compability. Thanx, Mike. Be in Synch with the Synchron from Camarillo, CA!! Datestamp: Monday, February 3, 1992 Timestamp: 7:09:24 am ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 73 Mon Feb 03, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 23:28 EST Bob, I have Turbo Kit, but never ran it because I didn't want to run it without a backup, and didn't have a hard drive backup program at the time that I trusted or understood. (Seems as though you plug in a human reference there instead of "hard drive backup program" in some cases. <G>) I think now the problem is that the new, fantastic, super-fast Diamondback II version can't decompress files backed up with the previous version. Bob Luneski is going to help me. Hope this does it! Thanks for the suggestion. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 75 Tue Feb 04, 1992 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 10:03 EST I, for one, have had absolutely no compatibility or other problems with my upgraded Data Diet. In fact, if it works as advertised, the upgrade will eliminate one very frustrating problem that I used to have. I am using a stuffed-to-the-gills Megafile 20. I have crashed several times (usually while running Aladdin) when DD would unsuccesfully try to decompress a large Dietized file but run out of disk space. Hopefully those types of crashes will no longer be a problem. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 76 Tue Feb 04, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 18:12 EST All, TOS ERROR 35s: I think the mystery was solved when it was pointed out that the files were compressed by an earlier version of Diamond Back II which the current DBII version does not restore- soon to be remedied I'm sure. If anybody else has TOS 35 problems with DD please speak up! Gunner, Update release: You're quite welcome. This was a necessary 'maintenace update' that I felt needed to get out ASAP and the patch procedure seemed the simplest method- especially for the user. I too agree with you about writing to the original, so I kept access to read only. David Fairweather, I think you may have misread the update docs concerning the decompress & out of space scenario. DD Tools needed a minor revision in the Normalize routine. The DD handler tries to do everything possible to make room on the WORK disk during normalizing; and for dietizing it will keep a copy of a file in the WORK dir if it runs out of room for the destination. Bill Rehbock, Thanks for stepping up to bat with the TOS 1.4 IMG situation. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 77 Thu Feb 06, 1992 B.AEIN at 00:11 EST DC, I patched my DD to the newest version and now I have a DD.WRK folder on C drive. I loaded up the DD config from the desk top and changed the directory to F and then saved then exited. Then If I run it again, it is back to drive C??? I then switched it back to F ssaved exited and rebooted and ran it again, its still on C. Help! How can I make change and stay to F??? Bman ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 78 Thu Feb 06, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:30 EST Bman, The old DD config problem... ;) Make sure that the "current directory" does not have DATADIET.PRG in it. This seems to be the minor stumbling block- not being able to configure the AUTO program- people run into. If you need to, consult the included text file which has a brief description of the scenario. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 79 Fri Feb 07, 1992 P.CARMACK [CASMOCK] at 00:39 EST I upgraded to the newest version of DD. Whatever you guys did, I can now dietize my Prism Paint files w/ no problem(I've got about 9 megs of 'em). Before, Prism Paint would croak when trying to load a dietized pic. Thanx a mil for the extra space I gained because of the update! Casmock ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 80 Fri Feb 07, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 15:46 EST Casmock, This is the first I've heard of DD previously (before 1.0b) having a problem with Prism Paint... Everyone please speak up if their is a problem with _ANY_ program!!!! I can not read minds, but obviously I end up doing some things right... ;) - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 81 Fri Feb 07, 1992 KWERNER [Kurt] at 23:09 EST Is anybody else having problems with Aladin since patching DD from 1.0a to 1.0b. Specifically with file searches and "choose download-brpwse." I tried installing/un-installing twice, same problem. Kurt ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 82 Fri Feb 07, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 23:21 EST Synchron I suggest you E-Mail the full detaril of that transaction to one of the Atari Reps here online. I am sure they would be interested in talking to one of there dealers that is selling STOLEN TOS on disk. As to the disk label and Manual, I can make those too... All ya need is Label Master Elite (or any other label program) and a DTP package (I recommend Calamus). As to the upgrade problem, I had no problem installing it on my system and running NEOLOAD.PRG (You didn't dietize NEODESK.EXE did you?) The problem may very well stem from the TOS version you are using. By the way, I have an unsuded set of TOS 1.4 still in the tube that I will let ya have for $50 if you would like the real thing. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 83 Sat Feb 08, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 00:21 EST KWERNER; I have noticed a couple time that I could not check out the new files I had checked for until I quit Aladin and ran it again. This only happened a couple times, so I couldn't really call it a bug. I just ran through the whole procedure and it workled fine. Don't forget to select the appropriate round table if you are set up for more then one. Gunner ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 84 Sat Feb 08, 1992 D.SCHREIBER3 [David Schr.] at 11:41 EST Just an interesting point that came up with DataDiet (it is working great for me at the moment). for me at the moment). I often download IBM Zipped text files and uncompress them with Unzip for the ST. I find that I cannot uncompress them then immediately try to read them using UIS 3 the way I normally do. I get a lot fo garbage, which I imagine is because DataDiet is in some sort sort of intermediary stage. But here's the interesting part - if I go to EdHak, I can load in the same file, and it looks just fine. Also, ...anyway, does that make sense? ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 85 Sat Feb 08, 1992 J.LASTAR at 19:10 EST I have called your number and left a msg on your b. Board. I cna't get the upgrade to work. I get a msg saying my disk has been tampered with. I took the disk back to my dealer thinking perhaps something had been done to it. It looked OK. I compared it with one he had on the shelf and it worked fine. I got home and I still get the same msg. Any Idea why??? ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 86 Sun Feb 09, 1992 F.OLIVAS [Fred O.] at 04:30 EST Gentelmen, Any attempts to de arc or de lzh files d/led from GEnie results in my work file writing the name of the particular file but the partition fills up with nothing. We're talking 12megs here folks. Why does DD do this? It's not for lack of disk space. I have plenty. I also had to reformat my drive recently because DD left traces of itself in every single file on my HD. The first line in each file said: Diet 1000. And this was after I normalized them! Needless to say none of my programs worked which requires RSC, DOC, PAG, etc... files. Bummer days. Fred O. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 87 Sun Feb 09, 1992 V.PATRICELL1 [Vince] at 18:50 EST Fred, It sounds like your DataDiet handler was turned off. If you view a file and see the word 'Diet' on the first line then your handler is definitely turned off. Do you have any of the extenders or filenames in your INF file that could be forcing DataDiet to keep it dietized when you try to normalize the files? Check it out with Tools by selecting file info and then click on one of the files you tried to normalize. As far as your problems unarcing files, could you be more specific. You said that the partition files up with nothing. Exactly what happens? ................................Vince ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 90 Mon Feb 10, 1992 V.PATRICELL1 [Vince] at 20:45 EST All, Look for an excellent review of DataDiet in the Feb. 1992 edition of Atari Interface magazine. It is well written and very accurate. Check it out! Bob, Please take your complaints up in private with DC. I for one don't appreciate seeing your continual complaining in a public area when it should be a private matter. ................................Vince ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 93 Tue Feb 11, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 18:23 EST J.LASTAR, Make sure the original is registered. If this is not the problem, then you will need to send it to us with $3 (for now) S&H to get it updated. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 94 Thu Feb 13, 1992 B.SALDANA1 [BOB] at 00:23 EST C.NICHOLLS [BILL] The basis for my comments were from my experience on d/loading the new data diet demo 1.0b. I don't remember having to go through that floppy disk procedural setup when I had the actual data diet prg. Sometimes the easier you make a demo or program to use the more acceptable it is to people. My first experience with Dclick was on a dc desktop d/l from genie, two or three times and I never got it to work but I noticed parts of their utility package included and after I saw the package, met them at an Atari show, I went to my dealer and bought dc utilities against their advice. (I'm a Texan and I buy Texan!) I was not disappointed, however I was with data diet. Vince- Last time I tried to go e-mail somehow it was delivered here. I will take your advice but please don't be disappointed if I return with sadder comments. I also have been considering reviewing data diet for the three computer magazines I subscribe to,ST FORMAT, ST USER.and PC Today (ST APPLICATIONS said it was to expensive to cash my check?)<G> Bob Saldana ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 98 Mon Feb 17, 1992 F.OLIVAS [Fred O.] at 00:42 EST Thanks for the tips Vince however, I've quite Data Diet. Since I've purged it from my system things seem to be sailing smoothly now. Fred O. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 99 Sat Feb 22, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 09:01 EST Bob Luneski sent me a copy of the PREVIOUS version of DB II, and it decompressed the mysteriously compressed files I had a problem with. I didn't know that his new, very fast program was not downward compatible with earlier versions, so I assumed my experiments with DC DD had done something, since that was the only other compression program I had used and DB II's latest version would not decompress the problem files. My apologies, once again. Now, I know I've said several times before I'm going to give DC DD an honest try as soon as I can back up my files, just in case. Unfortunately, I've had a lot of hard drive problems. The internal hard drive on my MSTE apparently was defective from the beginning, acting rather hinky and finally pooping out and causing me a lot of data loss. Then the power supply on the ICD host adapter conked out on my external hard drive, and I'm waiting to get that back from ICD, since my preference is to backup to Syquest 44s. They said I should have it around the end of next week. Then maybe I can do a backup and try DC DD again. It sounds as though it would be wise to avoid Dietizing anything on drive C, as well as the Aladdin folder, but everything else seems safe. I'll reread my downloads on that question when the time comes. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 100 Sat Feb 22, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 13:21 EST Ken As long as you use DD in Terminate mode, there is no reason not to dietize your Aladin folder. The only thing I exclude is my BBS (too many files to access and the work directory would grow until it filled drive C:), and the following extenders PR?, AC?, TOS, APP, TTP, GTP, ARC, LZH, ZIP, ZOO, ARJ, SIT, SYS, SPS, GIF, MSA, $$$ OVL plus the files DATADIET.TBL and DATADIET.INF. There is no reason to be afraid to dietize drive C: or any other drive. I said before, and say again. The only problems that I have experienced from using Data Diet were caused by Operator Error and WOULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED IF I HAD READ THE "F" MANUAL!!!! Take the time to read the manual cover to cover, then dive in. You won't be dissappointed. Gunner ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 101 Sun Feb 23, 1992 D.FISK2 [David] at 04:23 EST Vince; Thanks for the info Re : "Aladdin & DD" over in the Aladdin RT. Up and running now. I feel alot SLIMMER now. (20megs slimmer) Thanx David F. Fisk ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 102 Sun Feb 23, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 16:53 EST Gunner, Thanks for the info. I'm eager to try it, but I do want to back things up first, so have to wait for my external hard drive (with Syquest) to return from the shop. Maybe I'll have a chance to give it a try next Saturday if ICD comes through. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 103 Sun Feb 23, 1992 J.HAYDEN [JOHN] at 23:24 EST I just want to thank you for a wonderful program DataDiet is. It is compatible with the Migraph OCR program, and with its virtual memory and 14 support files I can achieve raw processing power of 750 words per minute. Well, that puts Disk Doubler for the Machintosh to shame! Congratulations! ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 105 Tue Feb 25, 1992 D.FISK2 [David] at 06:03 EST Well I'm sorry to say that last night and again tonight my Top Files in my Aladdin Folder in two different RT's got trashed. They were truncated, one by 30-40% and the other by approximately 80% or more. Until I can figure this out I guess I'll have to exclude Aladdin from DD. I'm using a 4 meg STe with Neodesk, Maxifile and Multidesk with DD set to "Terminate" mode (because Aladdin slows down too much using "Realtime" mode) and "Find Next File : Origional Size" because of Maxifile(I think it's because of Maxi..can't hurt). Any thoughts on this?? I've noticed the DATADIET.WRK Folder gets pretty full but there is still 300-400k of space. I've never had any problem with Aladdin before. Thanx for any suggestion you might have. David F. Fisk ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 106 Tue Feb 25, 1992 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 07:21 EST I hesitated for over a month between buying Data Diet and installing it. Now that it's done, it looks like I needn't have worried. No problems at all. But I too still prefer to lay off drive C. Most of my applications are there, and I'm Squishing them one at a time (those that don't save their configs to themselves), but there's not many data files on C other than RSCs, INFs, DATs and such. The space gain from dietizing them wouldn't be worth the time loss in using them, I'm thinking. I'm new to Squish and find it even more fascinating than Diet. If programs can all run in their squished state, then why are they sold in such a flabby condition in the first place? Or is a squished file some kind of self- extracting archive? (Or is that a trade secret?) gnox ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 107 Tue Feb 25, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 21:44 EST Come again, John? How does DD speed up Migraph OCR? Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 108 Wed Feb 26, 1992 J.MOSES2 [moses] at 20:31 EST J.Hayden, I'm also happy with DataDiet and have had NO problems, but... would the 750 wpm rate in Migraph OCR? Is this a magic formula for speed of which I'm unaware? Very Curious, Jim ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 109 Thu Feb 27, 1992 C.BINCKLEY at 05:22 EST Okay, quickly, here's my problem: I have DD set up to run in realtime mode from a 459K ramdisk. Sometimes, when I run a program - e.g. EdHak - and access various files of different sizes, the files in DATADIET.WRK folder are not "cleaned up" until I quit EdHak and run another program. It's NOT only with EdHak that I've seen this happen, it just happens to be one of the programs I use the most and remember for sure that this situation has occurred while using. (Nice grammar!) This wouldn't be a problem, but if I load a LARGE (over ~200K) file into EdHak, and if it doesn't get "cleaned up" before I try to load another large file, I get all kinds of strange things happening - sometimes it seems like DD has been turned off after exiting EdHak, although the DD accessory still says it's on, among other weirdnesses. Maybe I didn't quite grasp something in the manual or the README file, but I thought that in realtime mode, files were "cleaned up" - i.e., "flushed and deleted", immediately. I'm not sure what's supposed to be hhappening, but I'm more than willing to believe that I didn't quite comprehend something that may have seemed more obvious to you DC guys in the manual...(8^}) HE'P ME! HE'P ME! -- Chuck -- ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 110 Thu Feb 27, 1992 J.HAYDEN [JOHN] at 05:51 EST Jim and Ken, What I am trying to say that the DD program will not slow down the OCR program in some cases speed it up a little. After the first scan the DD program allows the OCR program to run at its fastest speed. The first scan about 420k in size is only 4 seconds slower when the DD program is uncompressing all the support files for the OCR program in its work directory on a different partition. I believe that is quite a good performance for DD considering the size of some of the support files for the OCR program. I can achieve raw processing power between 640 to 750 words per minute using the auto mode of the OCR program with a very large user directory, of course I did not add the scan time but, it is still impressive. Unless you try similar programs on different computer platforms you realize how good the DataDiet program is. I will give some tips I use to improve the OCR performance in the OCR topic in a few days. The key to all of this is to get to know the computer and the program and make it to work to your advantage. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 111 Fri Feb 28, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 13:48 EST Chuck Binckley, Using 'realtime' mode causes dietizing of files to occur immediately after access of a file is completed- versus 'terminate' mode which queues the dietizing of files until _process_ changing. The file is only flushed, _not_ deleted, from the WORK dir since further access may occur to it in sequences that could require extreme dietizing and normalizing overhead. Remember that you can manually 'Flush & Delete' a file or the WORK dir from DATADIET.ACC. NOTE: The WORK dir is purged of "stagnant" files when necessary in either mode. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 112 Fri Feb 28, 1992 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 22:20 EST This gets better and better! Now I've got my work directory on the CodeHead Ramdisk using a megabyte of fast ram on my TT. I've switched to Realtime mode so I don't fill up the ramdisk when using PageStream. This gives the best of both worlds, seems to me - extra drive space without extra drive activity. (I'll have to give up dietizing those mammoth Postscript files, but they're only temporary anyway.) One thing I noticed - when I used to install the ramdisk from the desktop as drive P for use as WordPerfect's virtual directory, I had Data Diet set up to exclude drive P, and this was visible in the config dialog even when P was installed (greyed out). But then installing P would deselect it, so that all the WP temporary files were getting dietized. Is there was a way around this? (Not that it's a situation that would come up often.) gnox gnox ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 113 Sat Feb 29, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 06:27 EST John, I'll be interested to see what you have to say about OCR. I can't see how compressing or decompressing files will make the program using the files run faster. Do you think DD makes other programs run faster, too??? Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 114 Sat Feb 29, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 21:38 EST Gnox Fuhrman, I'll have to look into the situation of adding a drive to a system and how it fits into the configuration of DD. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 116 Sun Mar 01, 1992 J.HAYDEN [JOHN] at 05:35 EST Ken, It depends how you have your computer setup. For example, on the TT you can have ACSI(DMA) or a true SCSI hard disk like the internal hard disk on the TT. The SCSI can transfer data faster than the ASCI hard drive bus. When you have the OCR program on the ASCI drive and the work directory on the SCSI you can achieve greater speed. The OCR program spends a great time comparing support files. Do you notice that when a hard drive partition is 2\3 full it slows down? When you have a SCSI partition that does not have much files in it the DD program can run much faster with the OCR program. However, the DD program does not spend much time compressing files or expanding files in the terminate mode. With the first scan the DD spends 4 seconds expanding support files for the OCR program and it can do this if the ICD cache is set up right and it is on the SCSI drive. After this, the support files are left uncompressed and each scan is left alone until you save a graphic region or save the ASCII file or until you exit the OCR program. The DataDiet program can save a little time in SOME cases. I manage to crash the OCR program at one time and the DataDiet program was able to clean up gracefully the work directory better than any Mac program I have seen. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 118 Sun Mar 01, 1992 W.GALLAGHER1 at 22:07 EST Help! Just installed Data Diet on the HD (Megafile 30) and Dietized and Squished everything that wasn't nailed down. OOPS I left Neodesk.exe alone, but the DD was on in the accessory, and I don't know if it got changed or not. First, I'm trying to figure out how to get into the self booting drive. It shows four bombs. Mind you, the calories savings were dramatic, however I have never backed the darned thing up. Any suggestions tor access? Bill (the procrastinator) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 119 Sun Mar 01, 1992 JEFF.W [ST Sysop] at 22:51 EST Bill - Boot from a plain jane floppy without any accessories or AUTO folder programs on it. First, disable the HD autoboot by either leaving the hard drive powered off until you have a desktop or use the keyboard bypass of the HD autoboot. With the hard drive powered up, run a copy of your hard drive booter from floppy disk. Install the C: icon and then go in and rename all your accessories to *.ACX. You might have to rename AUTO folder programs to *.PRX also, but try another HD autoboot first. If you dietized any files that your accessories or AUTO folder programs need (like .RSC files and .CPX files), that's very likely the source of your troubles. Normalize all files used by your accessories and AUTO folder programs and update the Data Diet configuration file to exclude those files from future dietizing. Once you've done this, you will probably be able to go back to your normal setup and autoboot from your hard disk again. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 120 Sun Mar 01, 1992 M.MOTOGAWA [MEL] at 23:20 EST Bill, Or, it just may be a matter of getting back into your hd through whatever backdoor method it supports and then unsquishing the hard disk booter file, typically a .sys extendered file. I forget what Atari's is called, SHDRIVER.SYS or something like that. - Mel ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 121 Mon Mar 02, 1992 W.GALLAGHER1 at 00:08 EST Thanks Jeff and Mel I finally found an OLD backup of my HD utility and Got in just 10 minutes ago. What was really great was how forgiving Data Diet/ DC Squish are. I just normalized the AUTO folder , Neodesk non-document files and my whole root directory, and bingo I'm back in shape. Thanks for your prompt reply. I have a couple of questions, though. 1. If I assume right, the normalized Squished files will stay that way, since you have to tell the program exactly which ones you want done. If, for instance I copied another new program to my hard drive it woul never be squished unless I directed such. 2. Data Diet I am not so sure about. Does it dietize all files which are not specifically excluded, and what effect does having the dd tools accessory set to on/off The manual is greek to me on this, although I have read it a couple times. 3. My Neodesk seems to take 3 times longer to load. Particularly noticeable is the delay between the last message from hard drive initialization until the EXE.neodesk screen starts to appear. Is this normal? 4. Lastly, Jeff , the renaming of accessories and programs you mentioned.. was that temporayr to gain access to the hard drive? I wanted to post quickly, so as not to worry others about using this program. I had several Dynacadd files go from 20,000 plus bytes to under 2,000 bytes! My database files were nearly that good too.(well, almost) Thanks again ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 122 Mon Mar 02, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:53 EST Bob Saldana, Please see e-mail for my personal (non DC) reply and action taken. Bill Gallagher, Sounds like you Squished the hard disk handler- one of the handful of files to avoid. Luckily there were prompt replies here to get you going again. Thanks guys! The README does have a brief list of files _not_ to Squish, including device handlers, for those that need a reference. Ken Van., Yes I too wish people kept their "dirty laundry" private. - keith gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 123 Tue Mar 03, 1992 W.LAMAR [Walter] at 01:38 EST I seem to be having a problem with Data Diet. This problem is occuring in many programs including Aladdin, Wordwriter ST and Wordflair II, amoung others. It appears that whenever I access a file for the second time, such as a dictionary, thesaurus or the message files in Aladdin, the calling application never gets hold of the file. This leads to a "file not found" message or program lockup depending on the program. This happens even with no accessories loaded. I have a 1040 with 2.5 megs, no other hardware mods and the following programs in my auto-folder: acc_ace2.prg calsho47.prg datadiet.inf datadiet.prg dcdskdrp.prg dcdskinf.prg dcdsktop.prg dcshopic.prg dcshow.prg dcspoolr.prg fsmgdos.prg maccel3.prg poolfix4.prg quickstc.prg quickstm.prg sync.prg timeset.prg tos14fix.prg I am using ICD disk software. Any ideas? Walt Lamar ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 124 Tue Mar 03, 1992 B.STOREY [Bill] at 07:10 EST Bill, I too had a similar problem about two weeks after installing DD. I knew how to access the HD via the "back door", and I turned DD on and normalized everything on the drive C. I then turned DD off and didn't use it for some time. As I again became unhappy with the crowding on my HD, I installed Superboot. I configured DD to remain off most of the time, but turn on when I access the folders which contain all my .MID files (14 Mb). This works well, and I am careful to not access any other parts of my HD while DD is running. About 1 month now, with no problems. I suspect DD may dietize files needed to access the boot disk, even though you don't specifically tell it to do so. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 125 Tue Mar 03, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 15:30 EST W.GALLAGHER1, I may have been wrong in my assessment of went wrong. Could you clarify your statement of "normalizing"? You normalize DD data files and UnSquish programs. Answers to questions: 1) Executables are never touched by Data Diet, so the user has to manually Squish/UnSquish them. No automation is present for those file types. 2) Yes, files are automatically dietized if not specifically excluded by extender, path or drive. Saving or copying under an excluded condition normalizes a dietized file. Turning Data Diet off via DATADIET.ACC causes the handler to turn off: dietized files are accessed in the compressed state (no normalization, good for backups) and no dietization will occur. Nice to see your getting good results with DD! Walter Lamar: I can't see anything that "sticks out" in your setup to help fix your problem. All that I can suggest is to eliminate as much of your AUTO folder as possible and then reintroduce AUTO programs till you find the conflict. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 126 Wed Mar 04, 1992 B.STOREY [Bill] at 07:19 EST Keith, I am not trying to knock DD, as I find it very useful, but it will dietize any file you access after you boot up, and somehow, it will get to your boot info and dietize it. I find I must be very careful not to access anything outside of my dietized folders while DD is turned on. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 127 Wed Mar 04, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 17:11 EST Bill Storey, I appreciate any input to make Data Diet a better program! :) Could you elaborate upon "it will dietize any file you access after you boot up, and somehow, it will get to your boot info and dietize it"? If you could list the files and their location, maybe I can come up with a solution. Also, please give the info pertaining to the files you want dietized. Not knowing your setup, it seems that you could exclude enough to make your life easier and not have to be so "careful". Remember, Data Diet tries to be transparent and automatic in operation, so this is where the INF file comes in... - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 128 Wed Mar 04, 1992 JEFF.W [ST Sysop] at 17:50 EST Bill - That's what DATADIET.INF is for. Set it up to exclude those files/paths/whatever that you don't want dietized. Once you do that, you never have to think about it again. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 129 Wed Mar 11, 1992 D.FISK2 [David] at 05:27 EST Am I missing something about running SQUISH? I am unable to get it to "batch SQUISH" Folders within a Folder. With dozens and dozens to be done it is a drag to have do each folder seperately. Better still, it would nice to have it do one complete drive at a time. What say you? Cheers, David F. Fisk <it's a nice prg tho> ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 130 Wed Mar 11, 1992 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 07:11 EST Yes, the DataDiet manual makes it clear that Squish won't go into subdirectories. I'll leave it to DC to explain why - gnox ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 131 Wed Mar 11, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 17:37 EST David Fisk, Squish: Yes, Squish does not do batch operations as noted in the manual and README. All R&D time went into the Data Diet modules because they compose the majority of the package. Squish was included since it was found to be the "only" solution to compressing executables under DD. What's in store for Squish? Only time wiII teII... ;) - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 132 Wed Mar 11, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 22:09 EST I did it! I'm using DCDD, and it seems to be working fine except that my INF file isn't doing what it's supposed to do. I tried to exclude C:\FMSGDOS,D:\ALADDIN, and I find fonts and files from Aladdin in the work file when they're being used. Is this to be expected? Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 133 Fri Mar 13, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:38 EST I may have been mistaken. I don't see files from excluded folders, etc., in the work folder, but I DO see their names go by when I quit a program that uses excluded files. Perhaps that's normal. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 134 Fri Mar 13, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 10:46 EST Ken Vandellen, After excluding a _normalized_ directory, associated files should _not_ be found in the WORK dir. If you could post your INF file, I'll be more than happy to make suggestions. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 135 Fri Mar 13, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 17:18 EST Ken Vandellen, Yes, seeing excluded filenames in the status printout is normal. Sounds like you have things under control now. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 136 Sat Mar 14, 1992 J.CARTER14 [John Carter] at 02:53 EST Is there any news on Data Diet and Maxifile?? It is not hard hitting the hot keys, but sometime your forget. John P.S. If you have Stalker, don't forget to exclude SCRAP.TXT in the DATADIET.INF file. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 137 Sat Mar 14, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 11:00 EST Funny that SCRAP.TXT should come up here. I don't have STalker, but I get SCRAP.TXT appearing from somewhere. I just found one that had a message from GEnie in it. Where is this coming from? Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 138 Sat Mar 14, 1992 D.FISK2 [David] at 11:36 EST Keith G/gnox; RE: Squish Ah yes...I finally found it, page 13 of manual..."DC Squish does not perform a fully RECURSIVE batch compression...".heheh...What ever that means. This certainly could be a little clearer. It likely would also be a good idea to actually mention this in the "Squish " part of the manual. I've also read README.1st twice and can find no mention of Squish limitaions (file is only 5721 in length and "looks " incomplete) Anyway, I WILL take your word for it. :-) Thanx. David F. Fisk <these are great prg's> ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 139 Sat Mar 14, 1992 D.FISK2 [David] at 11:53 EST Ken Van; Scrap.txt frequently comes from "cutting" part of a message reply or if you "save a quote" from inside Aladdin. I've always found it written to the root directory of my Aladdin drive. Also I think there is some relationship with CPX's and the Clipboard that will create "scrap.txt" that is movable between applications. Cheers, David F. Fisk ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 140 Sat Mar 14, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 12:34 EST John Carter, DD and Maxifile: Well its been over 5 months since DD was released, and even longer since we approached Codehead with a proposal, still nothing to report... Continue to use 'Find next file: _Original_ size' in Maxifile till further notice. DD and the Desktop, FWIW: Isn't it ironic that you don't have to treat the "slow" GEM desktop file operations in a special manner when using Data Diet? Hmmm :) Misc: Remember that for best 'performance' results, under any circumstance, you can turn _OFF_ DD for most file manipulation operations. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 141 Sat Mar 14, 1992 C.F.JOHNSON [CodeHead] at 17:03 EST Keith, I looked into changing MaxiFile to work with Data Diet, and it would take many more changes than you thought (based on your disassembly of my code). When MaxiFile is next updated, I'll attempt once again to find a way to make it compatible with your program. In the meantime, are you saying that you've completely given up on solving this in _your_ program? MaxiFile uses strictly legal operating system calls, in a strictly legal, documented manner. Data Diet, on the other hand, is a program that tries to make the operating system do something for which it was not designed. It seems to me (and this is how we treat _our_ system utilities) that it is your responsibility to make your program work as transparently as possible, with as many programs as possible -- and it's _not_ the responsibility of other developers (who have written code that follows the rules) to accommodate you, if you _can't_ make your program work with everything. The cause of this incompatibility is very simple; the OS call Fsnext() is documented to return a file's size, but when Data Diet is resident, Fsnext() does NOT return the correct size of a file. This is not MaxiFile's fault. It's yours, because you are not correctly handling Fsnext(), unless the user enables a special mode. A program that attempts to replace or augment system calls has the responsibility to emulate those calls down to the last detail. As I said, I will look into this when the time comes to update MaxiFile again. I would prefer, however, that you fix this in your program first, so I don't have to waste time rewriting code that already works properly. I would also prefer that you stop attempting to give people the impression that MaxiFile needs to be "fixed" to work with Data Diet. This is not due to a problem in MaxiFile, By the way, MaxiFile is not the only program that needs to have "Original Size" set to work with Data Diet. Thomas Quester's shareware AFX utility (which is very similar to Data Diet in function) _does_ work just fine with MaxiFile, and with other programs that expect Fsnext() to work as documented; he took the time to implement a scheme to do so, and it works. Perhaps you could do something similar. - Charles ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 142 Sun Mar 15, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 18:02 EST Excuse me for butting into your friendly discussion, Keith and Charles, but does that mean if DD had the change Charles suggested it would also take care of the messiness with Diamondback II? I asked Bob if he could put a button into DB II to have it read files at the original size, because I would be more likely to remember to select that option there than if I had to open the DD accessory to do so before backing up. It would be nice if DD could be changed to avoid these problems. I don't know who I am to recommend brain surgery to a neurosurgeon, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 143 Mon Mar 16, 1992 B.STOREY [Bill] at 07:43 EST Ken, SCRAP.TXT is created by Aladdin, when you copy a message to include in another. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 144 Mon Mar 16, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 10:44 EST Charles, Data Diet and Maxifile are completely compatible with each other. There are _NO_ "fixes" required by either party since there are _NO_ problems in operation of either product. Since all discussions about this subject seem to get semantically prolonged _with no benefit to the user_, I'll leave it at that. Luckily the users know the capability of both products and fully understand how to derive benefit and performance from each. - Keith Gerdes PS - Thanks for pointing out AFX. I had forgotten all about it... ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 145 Mon Mar 16, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 14:34 EST Ken Vandellen, The next version of Data Diet (version 2 _UPGRADE_) has a new section in the INF file for automating control of DD by program name. When you run a program, you can control all of the parameters that you used to pass to DD_CNTRL.TTP, but now with information in DATADIET.INF. This will tremendously simplify user interaction while giving more power at the same time. For example, when you run DBII you could set DD to 'File search next: Original size' or turn DD OFF. And when you exit, the previous state will be restored. Of course this is not what you are specifically asking for, but it will help facilitate transparent _use_ of Data Diet. By the way, there are hotkeys that control the search size mode. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 146 Mon Mar 16, 1992 JEFF.W [ST Sysop] at 20:18 EST Keith, This is one Data Diet customer's opinion. My versions of Data Diet and MaxiFile are not completely compatable with each other. To use Data Diet and my system at peak efficiency, I have to NOT use MaxiFile to copy, print, and view files or else my system goes bye-bye. That cuts down on the efficacy of MaxiFile considerably. I can configure Data Diet to return the original file size, in which case MaxiFile works okay, but now every MaxiFile directory, desktop directory, item selector file listing, etc. is excrutiatingly slow. For me, that cuts down on the efficacy of Data Diet considerably. I'm impressed with the level of disk storage savings that Data Diet provides. I'm equally impressed with the speed in which it handles compression/decompression of data files. More impressive still is the reliability of Data Diet in all other regards. And I'm equally impressed with the file management features of MaxiFile. I've grown very comfortable and dependant upon it. On my 'dream system', both Data Diet and MaxiFile would work smoothly together without the staggering inconveniences that they present to one another right now. Rather than seeing shots being fired over the bow between Double Click and CodeHead, I'd much rather see products that work well together instead of forcing users to make choices about which product they will have to abandon in order to use the other. Developers who work well together would be nice too, but I'm not going to push my luck. <smile> Right now, I'm only using one of these two products because of what I consider to be incompatabilities between them. I wish it weren't so. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 147 Mon Mar 16, 1992 C.F.JOHNSON [CodeHead] at 21:53 EST I agree, Jeff. I'm just trying to point out that MaxiFile uses the ST's file management system in a perfectly legal manner. It's not unreasonable to expect the Fsnext() call to tell you a file's true size; that's what the call does. This isn't "semantics," it's a hard, cold, documented fact. As I've already said, when I next have the time to update MaxiFile, I'll look at trying to make it work better with Data Diet. (But I hope the Double Click folks will find a more elegant solution to their problem first, so this won't be necessary.) At present, it really is hard to justify all the work and time it takes to do an update release, when there is truly nothing to fix - - and when there are a number of other projects demanding immediate attention. - Charles ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 148 Tue Mar 17, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:35 EST Jeff.W, Maybe I'm missing something by being the author of Data Diet and not having to rely on documentation or trial and error experimentation. When I run Maxifile, I put DD into one of two modes with a hotkey [some use Hotwire and chain DD Control]: 1) 'Filesearch next: Original size' or 2) 'Data Diet OFF'. 1] Returning the original size of a file slows directory listings down since this value is fetched from each dietized file's header. But, in this mode filesizes are "correct", allowing seamless file manipulation (ie copying or moving), viewing or printing. The choice was to have this mode permanently on or _user selectable_- we chose the latter. NOTE: The slowdown is similar to the directory listing in PRGFLAGS. 2] Turning Data Diet OFF is ideal for file manipulation of _compressed_ files. There will be no uncompressing and then re-compressing of files involved. Since most of the time you just want to have a compressed destination anyway, you save time. I would love DD to be intelligent enough to know when a file is being copied, but there is no tell-tale sign of such an operation. And before exiting, I change the chosen mode back to its original state. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 149 Wed Mar 18, 1992 JEFF.W [ST Sysop] at 00:43 EST Keith, Thanks for the reply. I've done those things and found it tedious to remember to have to turn DD off and on, and switch between original file size on and off. I might turn DD off and then try to view a text file while in MF only to realize it's a dietized file, so I'm forced to go turn DD back on and go to the desktop or view it in another application or utility. Instead of being very transparent, the DD/MF combo demanded a lot of my attention and manual intercession. I know these products _can_ work together, but for the way I use my system, the constant juggling of DD on and off and changing the filesearch next setting from one to the other became much more hassle than I wanted to deal with. I'll keep an eye on further developments though. As I mentioned earlier, I want to run both DD and MF with no muss and no fuss. :-) Jeff ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 150 Wed Mar 18, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:12 EST All, Anybody else wishing to make a comment on the Data Diet, filesize, Maxifile subject, please feel free to speak up since _all_ feedback is valued. I would hate to leave a sense of negativism in this topic... - Keith Gerdes [ Underdog ;) ] ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 151 Wed Mar 18, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 18:07 EST Keith, Your solution to using the original file size with DiamondBack II sounds VERY satisfactory for a forgetful guy like me. It sounds as though this will take care of the MaxiFile problem, too, won't it? I'll have to check my previous message to see what your hotkeys comment referred to. I forgot. Maybe that was someone else's question. All, Do you ever get the idea that these developers are real nice to talk to individually, but you wouldn't want to be in the same room with more than one of them at a time? Too bad some compatibility discussions have to get so emotional. Ken ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 152 Thu Mar 19, 1992 L.HARTWELL [Larry H.] at 22:40 EST Well, I have Diamond Back and Data Diet. The filesize problem can be worked around easy enough, but why should _I_ have to remember to switch filesize or DD on/off to use another program? I see the problem as a Data Diet Problem. Data Diet works quite well most of the time, but if you forget to turn it back on disastrous results are possible.. Try running Aladdin dietized then turning DD off and run it again...(be sure you backup the .cfg file first!)... ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 153 Fri Mar 20, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 15:41 EST Larry Hartwell, You are correct in your assessment that Data Diet should have the ability to automatically change control parameters on-the-fly. The next release of DD (upgrade to version 2) has a new section added to the INF file giving _YOU_, the user, transparent control of DD by program name. For example Diamond Back II, you could specify in DATADIET.INF its program name and any parameter(s) outlined in DD Control [ie DD On/Off, Fsnext Original/Diet size, etc] to be set upon execution of DBII, and then on exit the previous control mode(s) are automatically _restored_. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 154 Sat Mar 21, 1992 G.FUHRMAN [gnox] at 10:36 EST It looks to me as if the onus is on Double-Click to find a better way around the 'incompatibilities' with Data Diet, if possible. But I don't think we users have anything to complain about if it turns out that there is no way to use Diet and MaxiFile together without reducing the functionality of either. Maybe this is because I don't have MaxiFile (one of the few CodeHead products I don't own), and I can sympathize with those who are accustomed to it. But choosing to use Diet means sacrificing a little speed for a lot of disk space. To have such a choice available is a boon to the ST/TT world, even if the sacrifices are greater than we expected. Users who value speed and file- management power over hard drive space will probably choose MaxiFile and, for the time being, do without Data Diet. The biggest problem, as I see it, is how to notify users of exactly what their choices are before they buy. On my system the only time I have to think about Diet is when I use Diamond Back, and since that's always the last thing in a session, it's not a nuisance because I don't have to remember to turn Diet back on. So I don't see Diet as a flawed program in any way. gnox ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 155 Sat Mar 21, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 23:03 EST Larry H., When I first got DD last fall, I did some experimenting and lost my Aladdin .CFG file. I thought things were worse than they were, though, because I thought all of the files had been trashed since they showed 0 bytes, not knowing DD worked that way. I think the improvement in the next version of DD will take care of the filesize problem, if I understood Keith correctly. <<Ken Van Dellen>> ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 156 Sat Mar 21, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 23:22 EST Keith Will there be an upgarde fee for DD v2 ? ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 157 Mon Mar 23, 1992 C.BINCKLEY at 04:59 EST Keith, Maybe I missed it, but did you explain, in response to CFJ's messages, why DD handles "next file size" the way it does? I have DD, MaxiFile, and Diamond Back, and love all three programs; I have everything working with no problems, as I have DD set to use "original file size", but I do sometimes get annoyed having to wait for the SLOW directory reads, etc. If this can somehow be resolved, I'd be happy as ten clams! Also, just wanted to point out why I personally prefer to use Diamond Back's compression for backing up my HD: although I have almost all my HD files either dietized or squished, there are enough files that stay UNcompressed, or are large files that I use type A compression on (my default is type B), that I would have to use considerably more floppies to back up everything without DB's compression. And it's speed and efficiency are just about the same as DD type B! Of course, waiting for DD to decompress and DB to recompress everything slows the process down significantly, but right now I have more time than space (or money for floppies) available - but then, that's why I'm using DD in the first place!(8^}) Thanks for listening! -- Chuck -- ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 158 Mon Mar 23, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 11:13 EST R.DEAN, Gunner, yes, like all _UPGRADES_ (versus updates) to a product there will be a fee. Data Diet version 2 has been in development since the release of version 1, six months ago. DDv2 will definitely be well worth the wait and investment... NOTE: Upgrade details to be announced soon. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 159 Mon Mar 23, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 14:53 EST Chuck Binckley, Actually the discussion with both Jeff.W and CFJ cover the "next file size" issue. If there are specific details that you would like me to elaborate on or explain further, I'd be more than happy to do so! By the way, I commend you on your particular usage of Data Diet with Diamond Back. It's the perfect example of using two programs in a manner that you the _user_ want, due to the flexibility built in to both programs! I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside when I see this kind of message... :) - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 160 Sat Mar 28, 1992 MARTYKLEIN at 09:36 EST Hi folks, I've been using DD since its release with *NO* problems. The fact is that its not *completely* user transparant--you have to use some common sense and read the manual. For example, what to do if the machine locks up and you must reboot. The files created in the destination directories will be 0 bytes, but the ddwork directory will have the complete, uncompressed file. Sometimes DD gets confused about what to do with these files after a lock up and may have difficulty booting. Best thing to do is to boot without DD and copy the files in the DD work directory directly to their destination, then delete everything from the DD work directory. Usually though, DD is smart enough to recover from even the worst system failures by itself. Now where I have to really stay on the ball is when using Syquest cartridges with DD. For example, creating a document in a program, saving it, and then changing cartridges before quitting the program. Ooops, the path for the DD conversion of the saved file no longer exists! DD confusion. Best to "Flush and Delete the DD work directory prior to changing DD cartridges. I hit upon a neat trick to make Flush&Delete real easy, especially from the desktop after multiple file operations. Whenever you run or quit a program, DD automatically flushes the work directory. So, the simplist way I've found is to use C.F.Johnson's "Nothing.Prg", which just runs (36 bytes) and quits! Bingo-immediate flush. The reason this works better than other approaches (for me), is because I put the Nothing.Prg on the desktop as an icon, so its a one button action. I can't find a | n easier way to flush the work directory. Hey Doubleclick, how about better Syquest compatibility and a *quick* way to clean out the DD directory (without having to go to a DA inside of another DA (MultiDesk). The Nothing.Prg is freeware I believe, and I've renamed it Flush_DD.Prg--so this may be the simplist solution. Well, gotta go -- thanks DC for a terrific program. Marty ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 162 Sun Mar 29, 1992 V.PATRICELL1 [Vince] at 19:03 EST ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 163 Sun Mar 29, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 23:03 EST Keith, You have my .INF file. I normalized the Aladdin folder. It still gets Dietized. There must be an explanation. Please try again. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 164 Mon Mar 30, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 14:37 EST Ken Vandellen, I'll try again Ken. :) I just did the "two step exclude procedure" to my Aladdin folder and found no problems... Step [1] Normalize _ALL_ files in the ALADDIN folder (including sub- directories) with DD_Tools. Step [2] Add the path specification to DATADIET.INF and reboot. For example: #P D:\ALADDIN If the above fails, then I'm lost as to what the problem could be. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 165 Mon Mar 30, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 15:21 EST Ken Vandellen, Normalizing a directory of files: I may need to expound upon step [1] since I think I have found an oversight in my explanations on how to exclude a directory of files. You can't be sure you have normalized files associated with an "active" process- for example, choosing DATADIET.ACC's 'Normalize' function within Aladdin for D:\ALADDIN. The best methods to normalize an _application's_ folder would be to either normalize the folder a) with _DATADIET.ACC_ at the _desktop_ or b) with _DATADIET.APP_. If you need to normalize an _accessory's_ folder, use b) for the easiest method. [ Note: Under most circumstances you can choose 'Flush&Del WORK Dir' from _DATADIET.ACC_, to clear pending files in the WORK Dir, and then normalize a folder. ] - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 166 Wed Apr 01, 1992 B.STOREY [Bill] at 07:57 EST Keith, and all doc writers: You guys do an excellent job of writing programs that do a lot of things, but many of you do a lousy job of explaining how to use it. You start from a position of knowing EXACTLY what a program does, and how to do it. When you write your docs, you overlook things that need to be done. For instance, you are so used to going directly to a function and using it, you tell how to use it, but forget to tell how to get to it. That leaves me and apparently many others floundering about trying to figure out which options to click on to get to the place you are talking about. I feel that each doc writer should allow a person who has never seen the program before to use it, make note of all his questions, then answer them in the docs. This person should be one who is not very proficient with using the computer. (This is the type of people who are going to be using the program!) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 167 Wed Apr 01, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 08:00 EST I'll try again, too, Keith. Maybe something in the folder didn't get Normalized.... I appreciated the expanded explanation. BTW, I'm running the ACCs from withing MultiDesk Deluxe, and everything works OK except that I can't access DDTOOLS from the DATADIET.ACC. Is that normal? Thanks for the help. The program is working fine for me otherwise. I like it. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 168 Thu Apr 02, 1992 V.PATRICELL1 [Vince] at 19:18 EST Ken, I run the DataDiet ACC as a MDX in MultiDesk Deluxe and it calls up Tools just fine. Make sure that DD_TOOLS.APP is in the same folder as DATADIET.ACC. ................................Vince ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 169 Fri Apr 03, 1992 C.NICHOLLS [BILL] at 02:35 EST I found out the hard way today that if you accidentally type in the wrong drive for the CodeRam ram disk -- which is fairly easy to do -- it wipes the Data Diet configuration, which has the effect that there is no longer any work folder and excluded drives are included. You may not notice you have done this. As far as I can tell this is not a bug but a "feature" of DD. Bill ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 170 Fri Apr 03, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 06:25 EST >Atari-ST RoundTable >Category 30, Topic 12 >Message 166 Wed Apr 01, 1992 >B.STOREY [Bill] at 07:57 EST > >I feel that each doc writer should allow a person who has never seen the >program before to use it, make note of all his questions, then answer them in >the docs. This person should be one who is not very proficient with using the >computer. (This is the type of people who are going to be using the program!) > Yes, Bill, I think that would be the ideal way. I usually can wade through, although an occasional detail or feature can throw me, but sometimes I have many questions because a DOC writer is too close to the project or assumes too much. I like to think that my questions, that may appear stupid to the programmer or users who have become familiar with a program, may be useful to a conscientious DOC writer to point out the kinds of things that should have been explained better. This is NOT intended to be negative toward DC. I'm just responding to a message that happened to be posted here. Too bad it can't be somewhere more visible to all the DOC writers. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 171 Sun Apr 05, 1992 J.WISNIEWSK2 [Jeff] at 09:15 EDT Hi, Having Data Diet for only a few days (and I can report no problems so far), I have a minor bug? with DC-Squish - when doing a batch squish it takes the last filename and puts it in the file selector box - not a major problem but I have to do extra keypresses. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ Jeff ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 172 Thu Apr 09, 1992 R.GLOVER3 [Rob] at 21:32 EDT Is it safe to put the Datadiet.ACC in Multidesk Deluxe, or will it need to be memory resident to take care of things? Rob ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 173 Fri Apr 10, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 15:59 EDT Rob Glover, DATADIET.ACC/APP is basically a "user interface" that allows you to interact with the DD handler- DATADIET.PRG. So, it is not required to be resident (no hooks into the system) or even run after the initial configuration of DD. In other words, it is perfectly safe to run as an ACC or MDX under Multidesk Deluxe. :) - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 174 Mon Apr 13, 1992 B.AEIN at 00:52 EDT DD Questions: 1. When DD files are transfered between the same hard drive are they being uncompressed and compresed again? 2. If they are (which is a huge waste of time!) could a new version of DD know better than to waste time transfering files between the differnt hard drive partisions? How much faster would DD be on a 33mhz '030? 4-5 times faster, has anyone tested it on a TT or SST? Bman ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 175 Mon Apr 13, 1992 B.AEIN at 01:48 EDT Maybe you guy's could make it a little easier for us users to exclude files and folders by using a file selector? I find it very annoying to have to load up flash to add or delete entries in my DD.inf file, I feel that using a file selector would be MUCH quicker and easier! Could DD be written to work with Neodesk so that when files are copied or moved that DD be turned off for those functions? I will leave a note with Gribniff and ask if a update/upgrade to Neo could include an option in the copy/move/cancel dialog, if they could include a button to toggle DD on/off either manualy or Automaticaly for those operations, but need to know that you could program DD to work with Neodesk in this way? Please?!? This would be a great option!!!! If DD can not detect when files are just being copied or moved could a hot key be used to toggle DD on/off I hope I have given some good ideas to cogitate on Bman ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 176 Mon Apr 13, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 14:11 EDT B.Aein, File copies: Yes, copying compressed files involves uncompressing and then recompressing the file if the destination is not excluded. You can turn OFF DD (ie. with a hotkey) to copy compressed files as-is and eliminate this "annoynance". This is a subject that has been touched on in the past. It's really something that is a sore spot, from a programmer's point of view, for me since I am unable to do anything about the situation directly. You see generally a file copy consists of a two part process: The first part looks like a normal file read- ie. loading a text file in an editor. GEMDOS calls: File Open (Fopen), File Read (Fread) and File Close (Fclose). The second part looks like a normal file write- ie. saving a text file in an editor. GEMDOS calls: File Create (Fcreate), File Write (Fwrite) and File Close (Fclose). Extrapolating that a file copy is in progress can't be done without more info. So being able to automatically detect a file copy would be a great addition to DD, but I haven't come up with the magic formula yet. If only there was a GEMDOS File Copy (Fcopy or Xcopy) call! ;) Suggestions are always welcome... Fast machine and Data Diet: I've never done or seen any benchmarks for DD on faster machines. I don't think it would be in the 4-5 times faster range but it would be a very noticable difference! Maybe a future review will touch upon this... Still waiting on my SST. :( DATADIET.INF: What a mind reader! Your suggestion has already been implemented. DD Info Editor (DDINFOED) will be part of the Data Diet Upgrade Release v2.0. Sorry, still no details to give. Controlling Data Diet: Changing the user controllable parameters could be automated by _ANY_ program. [Warning: Opening a can of worms!] Since Data Diet has been out there long enough with a solid base, I would be more than happy to give the specification to anyone that asks. Although I'll leave the possibilities to user speculation due to past experience... :) - Keith Gerdes (soon to be checked into a Dialogware Anonymous Clinic) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 177 Mon Apr 13, 1992 R.ROSADO [Lyre] at 21:57 EDT B.Aein, You can use ALT+CONTROL+(Numeric Keypad "-") to turn DD off " " " " "+" to turn DD on I know exactly what you mean though. I was encountering the same thing. Since I knew their just *had* to be a hotkey for doing this I went back to my docs and found the above info. It's definitely made my life easier. Oh! And I have yet to find anyplace where these hotkeys don't work. I've even turned DD off while having the file selector on the screen without an harmful effects what-so-ever. Richard ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 178 Tue Apr 14, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 14:11 EDT Richard Rosado, Thanks for the help with the hotkeys. Even though they are not a trade secret [ although would be for those without docs :) ] a manual page reference (p.15) is preferred since the complete details are available there. Please keep in mind that I am not slighting or accusing anybody. - Keith Gerdes [a wearer of dialogs] ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 179 Wed Apr 15, 1992 J.WISNIEWSK2 [Jeff] at 21:06 EDT Anybody interested in compiling a list of programs that Data Diet causes problems with?. Here are several that have minor problems: Tracker (and Superbase Pro) Populous II Flight of the Intruder Aladdin (only some of the files) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ Jeff ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 180 Wed Apr 15, 1992 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 22:17 EDT I use Populous II together with Data Diet and have experienced NO problems on my 2.5 meg 1040ST. Populous II only starts acting funny if I load up with too many OTHER auto programs and accessories. Aladdin also works fine, except for the long delay after quitting. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 181 Tue Apr 21, 1992 R.GLOVER3 [Rob] at 22:10 EDT Is it okay to put the Datadiet.ACC into Multidesk Deluxe as a nonresident accessory, or should it be kept resident? Rob ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 182 Wed Apr 22, 1992 C.NICHOLLS [BILL] at 02:50 EDT Rob,I have had no problems using Datadiet.ACC as an MDX non-resident accessory. Bill ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 183 Sat Apr 25, 1992 B.MENAGH [Bill] at 08:33 EDT I've just started using Data Diet (bought at the TAF Conventiion) and all is going well except for a small discrepancy. When moving or copying a text file from one drive to another, using Maxifile, the computer seems to hang up with the busy-bee never stopping. When just dragging the file via the desktop there is no difficulty. All other files are moved or copied easily either in Maxifile or on the desktop. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks in advance. Bill ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 184 Sat Apr 25, 1992 J.WISNIEWSK2 [Jeff] at 10:03 EDT Bill, This is caused by the fact that Maxifile is looking for the original file size and is not getting it. Solution is to either turn Data Diet off while you are copying files or to set the file size switch to original. This can be done via the Data Diet Accessory. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ Jeff ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 185 Sat Apr 25, 1992 PDC.SW at 21:56 EDT Mike, When squishing with DC Squish on a large screen monitor the compression is not shown (do ya know about that?) Also on the same setup the DIRSORT program doesn't work as it should (dragging, etc.) Oscar ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 186 Sun Apr 26, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 10:57 EDT Thanks for helping out Jeff Wisniewsk. Glad to see the DD file size subject is under control by at least one user... :) The only thing I can add is that there exists the ability to control these two parameters via hot keys- see pages 15 and 27. Also see pages 25-27 for further info on the file size subject. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 187 Sun Apr 26, 1992 J.WISNIEWSK2 [Jeff] at 21:20 EDT Keith, No problem, with programs that change, compress or whatever the files on my hard-disk, I tend to read,read,read the manual and experiment with it before I use it on everything. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ Jeff ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 188 Mon Apr 27, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 08:59 EDT Oscar (PDC.SW), Squish will only print the percent remaining and compression percentage readouts in medium (640x200) and monochrome (640x400) resolutions. It was hard-wired since a vertical blank (vbl) routine is used to draw the numbers in the dialog, allowing for realtime status with minimal slowdown. DIRSORT, a non-DC pd program, was included to facilitate reorganizing the AUTO folder. It didn't work quite right in TT-rezes, so I'm sure it would have problems with moniterm and overscan too. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 189 Mon Apr 27, 1992 B.AEIN at 21:58 EDT Good news NeoDesk and DD users, this was a message left by Dan over in the NeoDesk topic: ---------- Atari-ST RoundTable Category 17, Topic 14 Message 131 Sun Apr 26, 1992 GRIBNIF [Dan] at 17:40 EDT BMan, I'll consider the Data Diet changes but, no offense intended, I'm not really sure that enough people would benefit from an option to make it worthwhile. Nonetheless, if Mike at DC wants to send me info on how to disable it temporarily, in private EMail, I'll certainly take a look at the possiblity. Dan ---------- Hows about it Mike? Send him the info and the rest of us DD-NeoDesk users need to convince Dan that we want Neo (if possible) to turn DD on and off automatical for file manipulations. So DD users, drop a note to NeoDesk and urge Gribniff to add the extra features. Thanks Bman ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 190 Tue Apr 28, 1992 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 09:14 EDT Wait a minute, I've been using Neodesk and Data Diet together for many months. You don't NEED to turn Data Diet off to do file manipulations with Neodesk. It's MAXIFILE file manipulations that are incompatible with Data Diet. Seems to me the DataDiet "switch" should be in Maxifile. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 191 Tue Apr 28, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 14:54 EDT Yo Mike! Nobody home... :) B.Aein, The Data Diet parameter contol info has been sent in email to Gribnif. I really didn't think anybody would get back so soon on this. ;) - Keith Gerdes [ DD author | DD on-line support rep ] ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 192 Tue Apr 28, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 15:00 EDT David Fairweather, Let's not open that can of worms again! Bman mentioned turning DD OFF in Neodesk for a particular reason. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 193 Tue Apr 28, 1992 B.AEIN at 22:15 EDT Well Keith, Deterimation and prespiration are what keeps us ST'ers going! I do hope that people WILL drop a "Please update NeoDesk to incorperate Data Diet options" note to Gribniff, even if you don't have Neo yet ;) FAIRWEATHER: If you were to copy a file from drive C to drive D, (weather you are using NEODESK or Atari's desktop) WITHOUT turning off DD, DD uncompress the file, writes the file, then compress it again. This takes time! Now if you are copying/moving more than one compressed file your gonna be wasting alot of time if you did not know or forgot to turn DD off for this operation. I just ask for Neo to have the option to turn DD off and on either manually or automatically for file manipulations. It would save much time and effort for Neo to do this automatically, so drop a note with neo urging them to do this minor upgrade! Thanks Bman ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 195 Wed Apr 29, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 19:04 EDT Keith, A while back I said an ignored path was being Dietized. It's been a while since then, but I think what happened was that I had an .INF in my AUTO folder and one in my DATADIET folder (where I put everything while installing the progam), and, as I recall, I was editing the one the program wasn't accessing, hence no effect. Sorry! Is the .10A file explained somewhere? Doesn't the ALT-CTRL-Keypad- work in every case? Such as with NEODESK? How about DiamondBack II? I recently learned about that feature while rereading the manual or here or someplace. Pretty handy! Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 196 Thu Apr 30, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 19:28 EDT Ken Van Dellen, Glad to hear you solved your path mystery. I don't follow your question: "Is the .10A file explained somewhere?" Please elaborate... I can only assume that the hotkeys _do_ control DD parameters in every case, since there have been no reports for DATADIET.PRG v1.0a to the contrary. Hopefully you learned about the hotkeys in the manual. ;) One effort currently being persued would automate the controlling of DD parameters for 'certain tasks' by a program- ie copy/move/backup. - Keith Gerdes ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 197 Fri May 01, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:30 EDT Keith, I have a file named DATADIET.10A in my DD folder. I assume it came with the program, and I can't figure out what it's supposed to do or go. It isn't in the list of files in the front of the manual. I saw the mention of the hotkeys in the manual recently, but I think I saw a not about that here, just before. Maybe not. Anyway, my point was, why can't the folks who are talking about turning off DD for moves with Neodesk or whatever it was just use the hotkeys? Especially if they work with all programs. Your idea about adding new tasks to the .INF has sounded great since I first heard about here. I could surely use it with DiamondBack II. Otherwise, maybe there could be a hotkey toggle for the filesize (to original and back). Of course, then I still have to remember to do it before running DB II. I did an incremental backup without switching to original file size recently, and then had to do a full backup to get it right, because another incremental backup, with the correct file size, wouldn't happen. :-( Thanks for the terrific support. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 198 Fri May 01, 1992 J.WISNIEWSK2 [Jeff] at 19:38 EDT Ken Van, The file 'DataDiet.10A' is a zero byte file and is the version number of the program. The latest version is 'DataDiet.10B' and the upgrade is available here on GEnie. ^^^^ Jeff W. ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 199 Fri May 01, 1992 B.AEIN at 21:57 EDT Ken Van, Some of us "folks" don't always remember that DD is there, its that transparent, great programing! You have any idea how annoying it is to hot key off DD ,copy or what ever then say load up Aladdin but forgot to turn DD on? YOU WILL LOSE FILES, I have done it twice and its not that Im stupid (my bother will argue that! ;') ) but it is very easy to forget to either turn DD on or off. Now wouldn't it be nice to not have to remember? It is INMO! Bman ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 200 Sat May 02, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 08:35 EDT Thanks, Jeff, on DataDiet.10A. Hmmm. I think I already ran that upgrade, so maybe I need to change the file name to .10B, and then in a few months I can ask here what that is. Well, Bman, I think Keith is going to make it easier for us absent-minded folks with his modifications to the .INF file procedure. Of course, he might be able to program the thing so when you want to copy files or whatever a message would pop up that says, "Hey, you dunce! Are sure you want to do this with Data Diet on?" That would remind us that it's still there and working. (I exclude Aladdin, so I don't have a problem with it.) So far, I've used the hot key only a few times, and for a short enough period that I remembered I had used it. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 201 Sat May 02, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 18:51 EDT Ken Van Dellen, The DATADIET.10A file is described in README.1ST on your original: **** from DD release 1.0b master disk The current version of the Data Diet package is indicated by a zero byte file on the master disk. Such file would have a name like: DATADIET.10B, indicating Data Diet version 1.0b. One or more files may be updated as the result of a version number change. **** Hotkeys can be used by the _u ==================================================================== (C) 1992 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari RoundTables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari RoundTables on GEnie are the *official* information services of the Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem in HALF DUPLEX) 800-638-8369. Upon connection, type HHH Wait for the U#= prompt. Type XJM11877,GENIE and hit RETURN. The system will now prompt you for your information. ==================================================================== ************ Topic 12 Sun Aug 04, 1991 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 15:40 EDT Sub: DC DATA DIET The new file packer from Double Click. 211 message(s) total. ************ ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 1 Tue Dec 31, 1991 W.LORING1 [BL.A.ST] at 23:25 EST Keith, The only problem with turning DD off for use in HotWire or the desktop, is remembering to TURN IT BACK ON. I imagine that since you're 'at the source', you're using a little newer version of DD than I am. In my version, if I try to run a program that accesses a dietized file with DD off, I usually see bombs. Is there a newer version available at this point? I'm using 1.0. ...bill ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 2 Wed Jan 01, 1992 V.PATRICELL1 [Vince] at 08:34 EST Robert, I _never_ said I hardly even know DataDiet is there. I said that it doesn't require any user interaction once it is set up on the system. There are ways around the MaxiFile slowdown, one way is to turn the handler off each time you copy files in MaxiFile. Make sure you are using type A compression and terminate mode for fastest speed. When you use terminate mode, you will not have any slowdown while using any application during the session. The only time you will know DataDiet is there is when you terminate the program, and when using type A compression, this is usually very quick. The only exception is Aladdin, and I have the biggest file (INPUT.TXT) normalized. ................................Vince ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 3 Wed Jan 01, 1992 D.SCHREIBER3 at 11:24 EST Does Data Diet occasioanlly corrupt data files? First, I had quite a bit of trouble when I installed Data Diet. I got crashes and lock-ups. It was all from my C drive. I tried for a long time to pin down all the problems and located several, the cured everything by re-installing the original files. So now I keep Data Diet away from my C drive and it works OK. One day I found the dial directory of Flash had been completely corrrupted. Near the top were the words Data Diet. It's an ASCII file. All sorts of garbage characters were mixed in. Today I loaded a WordWriter file and found it similarly corrupted. Also, at the top of the file were the words Data Diet. Does anyone know what is goin on? I like Data Diet and DC Squish very much, but I can't continue with them if they put my data in jeopardy. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 4 Wed Jan 01, 1992 B.SALDANA1 [BOB] at 13:08 EST Vince- Your lucky you know how to juggle dd on your system. Some people end up with the strangest results. It isn't all those goofy things you have to do turn this on, turn that off,flush etc. My idea of real time compression is compress everything and kick back and know I don't have a worry at all because everytime I access a file it runs at a standard rate and not slow as molasses. It doesn't have to work fast just standard. The real benefit being uncorrupted compressed files with more space on my disk. I guess you can't encode the files but how about encoding the squished file so that dd could run as an application. The way squish will hold an old file by changing it to xyz have an option to change it to prd. or acd. Then when installed as an application just choose *.d files to run dd. Anyway it's one step to many to be denied real time access from a disk when you boot from a hard drive. I respect my harddrive and value time I've carefully spent to load it. D.SCHREIBER3 Does Data Diet occasionally corrupt files? Only when you fail to manage it properly and you make a fatal mistake. What you saw was probably DC trying to throw in some subliminal advertising. Data Diet 602%&%*&%$#@#$^^$*I^^*)P%*&*U()P_(_+_*&&@ ^*()(_)__%)*$&*&@R&I(&*)_*+_)(*(&*@&^e7172#*&*^)_+<G>. Bob ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 5 Wed Jan 01, 1992 JEFF.W [ST Sysop] at 14:04 EST D.SCHREIBER3 - Is it possible that you are trying to use Dietized files with the Data Diet Handler turned off? This may be consistant with the problem you describe. Make sure that the Data Diet Handler is on or make sure to Normalize your files before using them while the Data Diet Handler is off. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 6 Wed Jan 01, 1992 R.DEAN3 [GUNNER] at 15:36 EST Vince; You're complaining about the speed of DD, but I have to wonder how you expect a compression program running in real time to not slow you down. Have you looked at programs available on other platforms? I just installed Stacker on a 12mhz 286. Comparable results to DD and it slowed the system down as much if not more to DD. With the adition, however, or the 16bit Stacker Card (Let's add another $100 to the price tag) it is now almost transparent. The software was available without the card from Computability for $79, with the card $175. Can we expect a software answer to data compression to keep up with an uncompressed system? I think not. If you didn't expect any system slow down under DD, you need to research your purchases better. On the other hand... Maybe the guys at DC can come up with a DD plug in board to sit under the 68000 and make DD scream <g> Bob ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 7 Wed Jan 01, 1992 F.OLIVAS [Fred O.] at 21:37 EST Dear Double Click, I have a problem with Data Diet. I've been using it on all my files (except those recommended to not dietize) and haven't had any problems since the Atari Glendale show (where I ordered it (it arrived a few weeks later)), and haven't experienced any sort of problems until recently. Aladdin couldn't archive the proper files and it would bomb out (two bombs always) and send me to the desktop. Fleet Street Publisher, upon quiting, gives me TOS eror #9. I'm quite sure that Data Diet is causing me these problems because after trying everything else I could think of I decided to normalize these directories with the problems and now all is well. Hmmmm... Any ideas or improvements or suggestions gentlemen? Fred Olivas ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 8 Wed Jan 01, 1992 R.JOHNSON [Robert] at 23:22 EST Vince, I did (now do) use 'A' type compression and in terminate mode. No complaints about that. My _only_ complaint was the long wait while in 'origional size'. Well, that and the fact that _something_ ate a 1+meg file that I had in Aladdin. I _used_ to have from file number 7000 to 21,000 in my Aladdin data file. _Something_ toasted it. So now \Aladdin\ is in my INF file. ------------------------------- Gunner, In all fairness, Vince isn't (wasn't) the one complaining about the speed of DD. That was me. And I wasn't complaining about the compression speed, just the amount of time it took to display a file directory in LGFS. And yes, I did expect a system slowdown, I just didn't expect to see it where I did. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 9 Thu Jan 02, 1992 DOUBLE-CLICK [DC Software] at 16:38 EST All- Look for an update- note, not upgrade- to the DD modules this month (1/92) along with a new demo version. I am planning to release the update as a "patch update" with the necessary file(s) uploaded to the services and the DC BBS, which will have the online reg. ready by then. Good news is that it is now compatibile with these programs: Dr. T's KCS Omega (and possibly other MIDI apps) and Outline ART. Also, operation in the MultiGEM environment has been much improved. As usual there will be full details in the included README. R.JOHNSON- Auto control of programs (like DD Control) is a planned addition to the handler via the INF file. Look for this in a future version. - keith ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 10 Thu Jan 02, 1992 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 21:30 EST Fred, I have had similar mysterious problems with Word Up 3.0 which disappear upon normalization. Then if I re-Dietize the folder, the problems are gone . . . until the next time they mysteriously reappear. I believe the problems may be related to turning off the computer without quitting WordUp first, but I'm not certain. ------------ Category 30, Topic 12 Message 11 Thu Jan 02, 1992 R.JOHNSON [Robert] at 22:03 EST Gunner, I installed DD again, and so far I am quite happy with it. Went from having 25 megs free to 47. No too shabby. Keith, Thanks for the info. Now a _slig