Euroscene 2/Euroscene 2.iso/USEFUL/ish/.documentation

Text File | 1995-11-02 | 7.3 KB | 194 lines

                         DISCLAIMER, LEGAL-SCHMEGAL:

Since this stuff is FREE it comes with NO WARRANTIES.  Whatsoever.  At all.
No, don't even try it.  The author is not responsible for any data loss or
damage arising from usage of thing, ish - the user takes all responsibility.
Ish has proved stable in testing <Enforcer doesn't play a merry tune or run
outta baudrate>, but nethertheless.  Also check out the COPYRIGHT at the end
of this text for distribution details, especially if you're connected to a PD
library or CD-ROM house.


                                     WHY?


I elected to throw this thing together as a support program for the
brilliant EuroScene 1 CD from Almathera which makes life worth living, and
the AmiNet CDs.  There's quite a few GUIs for archives, but some have
trouble working on all systems, especially under 1.3.  And this is a bit
quicker to run, as it only deals with archive checking and unpacking, which
is what you do most of the time when downloading or working from CD.
Hopefully, thing, ish should be quick, small, and compatible with
everything.

As well as archiving, it also acts as a 'shovel' for copying recursively -
useful for CDs that have individual Fish disks in their own drawers, for
example.  <It wasn't much extra to add, so it's in>

"thing, ish" makes massive use of the ReqTools library, which is copyright
1991-1994 Nico François.  It's also brilliant.  This is why the ish, thing
combination is under 20k in size.  It's also very easy to add extra features
to.  <Okay, I admit it, I've no idea how to write an Intuition frontend.  So
make me pope>


             HOW TO USE <after you've INSTALLED - see further on>

Double-click on the icon, or enter 'ish' at the Shell.

"thing, ish" recognises 3 archive types - LhA, Zoom and DMS.  Archives
compressed with these usually have extensions of .lzh, .lha, .zom or .dms at
the end of their filenames.

The not-totally-obvious options:

SOURCE:

    Select a source archive <or directory> to process. If you wish
    to use a directory for shovelling, simply leave the filename
    gadget empty.

DESTINATION:

    Select the output device or directory to unpack or copy
    to.  Note that DMS and Zoom require a device that supports
    trackdisk.device or emulates it - examples are "df0:", "df1:",
    "ff0:" or similar - and must be specified as such, volume-names
    are no use. LhA and a directory copy can use any directory path
    as long as there's sufficient space available to unpack into.
    DMS and Zoom simply overwrite tracks on the disk - any previous
    data is wiped. Once again, we cannot be responsible for data
    lost, use the DMS and Zoom unpackers at your own risk.

MODE:

    If you want to test the structure of an archive, or view the
    decompressed size and other statistics, selecting MODE repeatedly
    will cycle through Unpack, Test and View. <Zoom doesn't have a
    'View' mode, so uses its 'Test' option here>

GO:

    Starts an operation on the selected source. 'ish' calls 'thing'
    for this. Usually, output from the operation is directed into a
    console window so you can see what's going on and any errors,
    with a confirm request at the end of the task. Due to the way DMS
    unpacking works, it has to be run in the background for output
    to be directed into console, so the confirm requester sits
    alongside - just click it when DMS has finished.


                          REQUIREMENTS, INSTALLING:

o     Any Amiga with at least 512k RAM and KickStart 1.3

o     reqtools.library <v38 or above> in LIBS:

o    'thing', LhA, DMS and Zoom in the command path - C: is recommended.

o    If running under KickStart 1.3, 'Run' in C: and ARP.library in
    LIBS: <ARP.library is useful to have in LIBS: under all versions
    of the OS anyway>

Check out the Installer script supplied with this distribution to
automatically put 'thing' and the library files in place.  <You'll need the
Installer program in your command path - not included as it's bigger than the
distribution archive and you can get it elsewhere anyway>.  'thing' and the
library files can be found in this directory.  The archivers themselves are
not included due to size, but can be easily obtained.

If you want to use the 'shovel' copy features of thing, ish, you'll also need
extra commands in c:  - 'dir', 'list' and 'copy' for 2.x systems, 'dir', 'du'
and 'copy' under 1.3.


               INSIDE AMIGADOS <ISH FOR THE SINGLE-DRIVE USER>

If you're booting on a floppy-and-CD-only system, and want to have no
reinsertion of the boot disk when unpacking starts <example, using a
non-bootable archive CD like Aminet with a CDTV or A570>, it's best to have a
startup-sequence that looks like this:

    SetPatch
    assign env: ram:
    assign t: ram:
    SetEnv IMPORTS cd0:
    SetEnv EXTRACTIONS df0:
    copy c:LhA ram:
    copy c:DMS ram:
    copy c:Zoom ram:
    copy c:Thing ram:
    copy c:Run ram:
    copy l:Disk-Validator ram:
    assign l: ram:
    assign c: ram:
    sys:c/LoadWB
    sys:c/EndCLI

<Of course, you'll need the relevant commands, handlers and libraries on the
disk as well>

LhA looks in l:  for its registration file, so would ask for the bootdisk
normally - and then immediately start unpacking, which means loads of
diskswaps.  Assigning l:  to RAM:  eases this problem.

To use the disk described above, simply boot up with it, open the disk icon
and click on Ish to start work.  Then eject the bootdisk, which isn't needed
anymore and frees up df0:  for unpacking.


                                CUSTOMISATION:

thing, ish makes heavy use of environmental variables in ENV:  - ish writes a
variable and spawns thing as a subtask, which takes the variable as its input.
ish also reads environmental variables on startup before offering its internal
defaults, these are:

IMPORTS - the 'Source' directory, defaults to 'ram:'

EXTRACTIONS - the 'Destination' directory, defaults to 'df0:'

ISHWIN - the specification for the output window - currently defaults to
     'con:0/0/640/200/output.ish'

To set a variable before running Ish, use a command such as

    setenv IMPORTS ftp:newstuff

in a Shell - this will set the Source directory to the directory
'ftp:newstuff'.  If you wish to use spaces when specifying ISHWIN, enclose the
entire variable with quotes.

IMPORTS and EXTRACTIONS are written to ENV:  each time a 'Source' or
'Destination' path is selected.  Under KickStart 2.1 or higher, once you've
set any of the 3 variables, you can copy them to ENVARC:  to have them set
automatically each time you boot.  Below 2.1, you need to add a line like

    setenv IMPORTS where:you/want/it

to the Startup-Sequence to have it set on boot-up.  But that's easy to do.


                               COPYRIGHT, &TC:

The run-time library ReqTools.library is <A> brilliant, and <B> Copyright
(c) Nico François 1991-4.  All the rest is copyright THP/c!itruS'95, all
rights reserved.  This release of 'thing, ish' is for Almathera's CD-ROM
use ONLY.  NOBODY ELSE.  Other optical distribution is ILLEGAL and WILL be
vigourously pursued.

        Contact ze author via Internet at

        [e-mail] or [e-mail]

Unless I undergo a radical change of mind, I doubt there'll be many feature
additions to thing, ish.  It's designed to be quick, SMALL and easy to use,
and the more that gets added, the more cumbersome it becomes.  I'm not a
fan of bloatware for the sake of bloatware.  However, if you can see any
areas of the current program that have errors or can be
performance-tweaked, I'm open to suggestions.