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Text File | 1996-10-14 | 46.6 KB | 771 lines

History (up to version 0.75) ------- Modifications of the current version can be found in !Help. 0.50 (23 Jan 1991) - First release of !DiskBase. Running in Wimp but individual actions not yet multitasking. 0.51 (02 Feb 1991) - Fixed a bug in DUPLICATES. Too many entries were accused of being duplicates. 0.52 (13 Feb 1991) - Created fully multitasking actions. (ADD, DELETE, SHOW, SEARCH, DUPLICATES) 0.53 (23 Feb 1991) - Results can be placed in a textfile on disk or copied (via RAMtransmit) to another task e.g. printerdriver, !Edit/!DTP etc. 0.54 (23 Mar 1991) - Some bugs fixed. (Nasty one in finding duplicates) 0.55 (04 Jun 1991) - Fixed some bugs in allocating memory, case-sensitivity of diskname of Duplicates, closing datafile if loading of it failed, and bugs in saving results file fixed. Furthermore created sub-options in Duplicates for the type of report. 0.56 (23 Jun 1991) - Added the option in SEARCH to include/exclude disks. Also added the option to start files/applications or open directories by double clicking on a line of the RESULTS window. 0.57 (29 Aug 1991) - !DiskBase now only momentarily changes the CSD during the addition of a disk directory but will restore it before leaving this procedure. Bug, resulting in a program crash when a SAVE failed, fixed. Added the Print DiskLabel option. 0.58 (14 Nov 1991) - Removed the resetting of the CSD added in version 0.57 because it could intermittently result in "FileCore in use" errors. (Depending on DirCache-size and/or Buffer-size of filing system). - Created a multi-level menu-structure for fonts in DiskLabel option, using FontMenu module designed by Joris RÖling. - Adding and deleting disks is now done from a window (staying open) instead of from a submenu. The contents of an archive file is now examined and stored when adding a disk. - DiskBase now also supports SCSI and IDE filing systems so that harddisks with these filing systems can also be stored. Due to the way information was stored in the datafile I had to decide to store sizes of archive files and directories in Kbytes (in 3 bytes, max size 16777 Mb) while applications sizes stay in bytes (also in 3 bytes, so max application size is 16 Mb bytes). Reason was that a maximum directory size of 16 Mbytes is far too less for harddisks. Also filing system for each disk is now stored. - Conversion of an older datafile when loaded in !DiskBase 0.58 is done automatically. Consequence is that when afterwards this updated file should be used with an older version of !DiskBase, an incorrect size of directories is shown. Also since the 0.58 version knows a new entrytype for archive files added with the 0.58 !DiskBase, these files won't be recognised as files or archives when used afterwards with an earlier release. WARNING: Of course converting the datafile can't automatically update the file with the contents of the archive files, so you have to SEARCH yourself for archive files (filetype &DDC) and then ADD all disks containing archives to modify the datafile to contain the contents of any archive files !!!! 0.59 (27 Dec 1991) - Main reason for this release was the fixing of some bugs. When deleting disks containing archives the number of files wasn't decremented for deleted archives. When an ADD of the contents of an archive file failed, that disk wasn't added at all. Now changed into adding the disk without adding the contents. In the ADD DISK window is a choice for an optional warning if an ADD of the contents of an archive fails. Displaying file sizes in the RESULTS window is now done using the SWI OS_ConvertFixedFileSize so that a RISCOS consistent display is given. When clicking on a line in the RESULTS window versions below 0.59 called Wimp_StartTask also if it is a file that should be run/started. This always causes a new application being started, even if there is one copy of that application already running. (e.g. clicking on a TEXT-type file when !Edit is already running starts another !Edit, instead of the running !Edit loading the textfile). Version 0.59 makes use of the Filer_Run syntax to run/start a file, if RISCOS 3.0 is used !!! This acts as double clicking on a file in a directory viewer, so no other copy of an application is started if it is not necessary. (e.g. the already running !Edit will load the textfile). In RISCOS 2.0 this facility is not available and the other method is still used !!! It is also possible to click not directly on a file in the RESULT window, but on the directory the file is in, and then double click on the icon in the directory viewer. 0.60 (20 Jan 1992) - Added the summary option in SHOW. It gives a easier to read overview of the contents of a disk. - Now if RISCOS 2.0 is used !DiskBase uses the broadcast Message_DataOpen to see if an application is already running that is capable to load the selected file. If not, that application is started by a *RUN of that particular file. (See also the history of 0.59) - Some (minor) speedup of the redrawing of the RESULTS window by changing the code and by deleting the word 'bytes' when displaying entry sizes. (Even more RISCOS compliant as well). - Rectified several (grammatical) errors in this Readme file. (Thanks to Kees Breet for his spelling checking) 0.61 (24 Feb 1992) - Size/filetype/timestamp of CFS-files shown now are the ones of the uncompressed files. Previously files all showed up with filetype of 'CFSlzw' and size/timestamp of compressed file. Already made provisions to show the difference of archives made by !Spark and !ArcFS. !Spark archives are shown with a 'S' and !ArcFS files with an 'A'. At the moment all archives are shown as !Spark-files, even if they are created by !ArcFS. In the latter case however, no contents of the archive is shown. As soon as I have enough details of the layout of !ArcFS files I will implement the decoding and the correct display ('A') of the files. - Fixed a bug concerning SEARCH. Previously doing a SEARCH for files and/or directories also showed all archive files. Same type of error fixed in DUPLICATES. - Got some complains about !DiskBase's menu opened after opening a RESULT window. Problem was that RISCOS 2 doesn't tell an application that it's menu is closed (by clicking the Menu-button on another application for instance). But at the end of an action !DiskBase had to unshade several menu-items, if the menu was still (or again) open, by doing a re-open. This resulted in any other menu being closed. What !DiskBase does now is saving the handle of the menu (actually a window) as soon as you click on one of the options of the main menu (not the submenus) so it can check at the end of an action if the menu is still open. So if you click on 'Status', 'Add disk' or 'Delete disk' at the start of the application, all future re-opens of the main menu are done only if necessary. - !DiskBase now makes use of Acorn's Interactive Help. When !Help (found on Acorn's Application disk 1) runs, help info is shown appropriate for the window/icon the pointer is over. - All warning- and error-messages are now gathered in the file Messages, and via the MessageTrans (MgsTrans) module loaded when needed. So now its possible for any user to translate the messages to his choice. - Added the percentage in the hourglass during the save of results. Because of the long time it can take to save these (every line of text has to be formed during this save), the ESCAPE key is enabled now during save, to be able to abort it. If you save results directly to an application using RAMtransmit (e.g. !Edit etc.) you have to press ESCAPE twice. On fail of a RAMtransmit, RISCOS restarts the save via a scrapfile. The second ESCAPE is needed to abort this. - Changed the Activity window. Layout is RISCOS 3 now, and I added some more control during actions. ABORT and PAUSE are self explaining. FAST will make !DiskBase monotasking, resulting in all other jobs being paused. Pressing ESCAPE (long enough) results in !DiskBase continuing multitasking again. STOP will abort the action, but results found so far will be shown if possible. 0.62 (27 Mar 1992) - Archives created by ArcFS can now also be handled by !DiskBase. - Fixed several bugs introduced when I implemented the handling of CFS-files. When disks containing CFS-files where deleted, the number of files wasn't decreased correctly. Also applications and directories containing CFS-files are now shown with their original sizes instead of the compacted sizes. This is necessary for finding duplicates and more consisted with the way sizes of applications and directories are shown inside archive files. So this also fixed some errors in finding duplicates. The colour of CFS-files when shown in a result window is now black, being more appropriate because it is always a single file, and light blue is now reserved for archive files only. - Added the 'Press ESCAPE for multitasking' warning in the Activity window when FAST (monotasking) was selected during an action. - When adding a disk resulted in deleting that existing disk first will now again update the Status window in between. 0.63 (24 Apr 1992) - Removed a bug which resulted in intermittent failing to setup the saved fontname correctly after loading a datafile or causing warnings like: Font 'Corpus.Bold' not available. Using 'Corpus.Bold' instead for printlabel option. - Added 'Free xx K' on a printed label. - Added the possibility to change the dimensions of the printed disklabel, and the way positioning of it on paper is done. !DiskBase now stores labelsizes, number of labels per row and column, and gaps between the labels. !DiskBase prints labels one at the time, but it would be nicer to be able to queue the labels until one sheet of paper is filled and then print them all together I'm thinking of implementing this but I'm not quite sure how to do it. 0.64 (26 Aug 1992) - Removed some bugs resulting in 'Address exception' errors when selected font was not available. - Removed bug resulting in 'Access to window denied' if ESCAPE was pressed when monotasking and mouse buffer was not empty. - Possibly ADFS-harddisks where counted twice in earlier releases. Corrected now. - Printed labels didn't show CFS-files in '$'-directory. - Contents of PackDir (by J.Korting) files are decoded now and stored as entries is the datafile. - When an error occurs during monotasking, will switch over to multitasking to prevent possible system hang. - In earlier versions, switching mode with a closed printlabel-window didn't rescale the selected font. - Option added to reverse the printed label for ease of use in diskette boxes (of flipover type). 0.65 (21 Nov 1992) - Changed coding to prevent problems with filing systems (like Morley SCSI) with SWI-names inconsistent with filing system name (SWI-prefix 'SCSIFS_') - In version 0.64 only PackDir files with 13 bits compression where decoded. Removed this bug. - Changes made in printing procedure to be able to queue a complete page before printing. - Updated interactive help messages where appropriate. (wasn't done the last few releases.) - On the printed label a date is printed now. This is the date the disk was added to !DiskBase, so the date the printed info is gathered. 0.66 (27 Feb 1993) - Added code to allow contents of Squash- and SparkFS SparkDir-files to be examined. - Rewritten the code for displaying the Results-window. When performing Show/Search/Duplicates, only an array of pointers to valid entrynames is created. When displaying the results, for each pointer a conversion to a textual string is needed before this can be shown in the results-window (only the visible lines are decoded). So during a scroll, or redrawing the window, again a conversion needs to be done. To speed up this process I've rewritten the major part of the routine in assembler, which speeded up the redraw by 20-30%. Some minor layout changes of the results are made. - Solid icon drag for save of datafile and resultsfile implemented (although not fully satisfactory yet). - Show and Search are speeded up if the diskname doesn't start with a wildcard. Before the operation begins a binary search is done in the diskname-list so that only disks with valid names are scanned anyway. (Before this was done during the Show or Search, and when a not valid diskname was found, that disk was also skipped, but the process took much longer then). - Furthermore some bugs fixed: - Sizes of directories inside ArcFS archives were a factor 10 too big. Newly added ArcFS archives will now be OK. - If the first entry of a PackdDir file was an application, the size was a factor 10 too small. Also if the only entry of a PackdDir file was an empty directory, one invalid extra entry was added. - For some filetypes the space of names shorter than 10 characters was not always filled with &00. This resulted in a corrupted results display using the new (assembler) display routines. This could also prevent files not being recognised as duplicates of each other. # Therefore during the loading of a pre-0.66 datafile, # a scan of the file is done, and this will repair all # invalid entrynames. # It will also repair the wrong directory- and # application-sizes as described above. # The only problem with this is that application sizes # inside PackdDir files in previous versions were # rounded to 1 kB sizes, whereas other application- # sizes were stored with the exact amount of bytes. # This will prevent the Duplicates-function to find # a duplicate between an application inside a PackdDir # file and the same one stored outside a PackdDir-file # when 'Compare timestamps/sizes' is set. # The only way to fix this is to re-enter all the # disks containing PackdDir files in the database. Once a database is repaired, a save of the file will mark the file as being repaired and the next load of it doesn't need to be scanned anymore. 0.67 (31 Mar 1993) - I finally found the reason for errors reported by some users resulting in corrupted datafiles. Symptoms were errors like 'Number too big' during SEARCH, 'String too long' during SHOW or a SEARCH continued far over 100%, finally resulting in 'Address exception' etc. The cause for this error to occur was the adding of disk numbers 129,257,385 etc., and the disk(s) there after, resulting in the number of entries becoming a multiple of 512. In both occasions the heapmanager could decide to move the blocks inside the heap. Because at some points I didn't recalculate the pointer to the record I was updating at that time, the 'update' could be done in a random other record, resulting in this corruption. To find one of these types of corruption do a SHOW with 'Names only' and check the number of dirs/apps/files. If for some disk(s) this is '16777215 / -1 / -1', the datafile is surely corrupted. In this version of !DiskBase I have included a small program called DBaseCheck, which you can use to check your datafile if you think it has a problem. This program will try to fix errors as far as possible or will tell you which disk(s) you have to add again to remove the corruption(s). In some situations it can not decide if something is a real corruption. (e.g. file-timestamps of &FFFFFFFF &FFFFFFFF) You can test this by adding the disk to an empty datafile (start !DiskBase 0.67 without loading a datafile), add the suspected disk and save the file. If checking this file results in the same warning(s) then there are NO errors. Unfortunately DBaseCheck can't find nor fix all possible errors. It will tell you if a datafile is not repairable, but it can't find errors like incorrect filesizes (e.g. size=12 bytes instead of 135K etc), or corrupted timestamps. So be aware. When you double-clicked on a CFS file of a pre-0.67 version !DiskBase gave a warning that it couldn't start/run a file compressed by CFS. This warning is no longer needed. It is possible to start/run a CFS file, by altering the 'Alias$@RunType_D96'. The best places to do this is in the !Boot and !Run files of !CFS itself. If you change the line Set Alias$@RunType_D96 "Set Dummy$Variable " to Set Alias$@RunType_D96 Filer_Run CFS#%0 you will always be able to run/start a CFS-file by double-clicking (from the RESULTS window as well as from an ADFS filer-window, without having to open the CFS filer window). If you double-click a squashed file, you will be given a warning that if you continue, this double-click will only replace the squashed file, without it being run. This is the way Squash works. Double-clicking an application that has one or more squashed files in it, could also result in some of these files being unsquashed. But this time !DiskBase won't give a warning, simply because it will not check the files inside the application before starting it. (The same thing occurs when you start an application in a filer window by double-clicking) Squash won't squash very short files, so often the !Run file is unsquashed, and thus will be run when you start the application. This in turn will nearly always run a !RunImage file. If this one is squashed, Squash will unsquash it without running it. (Alias$@RunType_FCA : Run <path>.!Squash.!Run %*0 only unsquashes a file, it won't run it afterwards). So be aware of this if you use Squash. One other thing to keep in mind if that unsquashing file(s) will of course result in your datafile not matching your disk(s) anymore, so you should also ADD the disk(s) again to have your datafile up-to-date! Another change I've made is that all assembler code is now gathered in a file called 'CodeFile' and not any longer in the !RunImage file itself. This has two main advantages: the code doesn't have to be assembled at startup time (so startup is faster) and less memory is used (now only assembled code is in memory, not the Basic lines containing the non-assembled code). Also the file 'HeapCode' is no longer needed, because this code is also included in CodeFile. Also after loading the !RunImage file a CRC-check is done over the !RunImage-file. If this check fails, !DiskBase will not run anymore! This I have added because it often happens that I get bugreports about !DiskBase versions in which !RunImage files aren't the original files anymore (so someone has changed the file, even though it is a crunched one, so very hard to read) and I don't want to spend more hours looking for bugs that aren't there in the original version. So to all of you who want to try to change it, first make a backup of !DiskBase. # Even loading the !Runimage file in a Basic Editor and # saving it again, without changing anything can corrupt # a Basic file when it is crunched. # Also renumbering the file will result in a CRC-error. This will probably not stop a very determined person to try to mess around in the program, but it will keep the average user from trying to. I also included a textfile named BugReport, which I hope everyone will use to report bugs with. If you answer all the questions in it as good as possible, I probably can trace errors more quickly. Fixed a small bug which marked an updated datafile as not updated as soon as Results were saved, instead of the datafile itself. 0.68 (25 June 1993) - No new functionality in this version, only several bug-fixes. - An anoying bug fixed in the code which fixed earlier problems with ArcFS-entries. If an ArcFS-entry was the last entry of a disk, the datafile couldn't be loaded. (If you would do a *SHOW DISK* at the command prompt, you would see: DiskBase$FatalError : Internal error: abort on data transfer at &038B5BCC at line 24630) - Entries of type Squash and SparkDir (SparkFS) were not handled right when a disk was deleted (value of Files was not decremented). For this reason a scan will be done when loading an older datafile, and if the actual number of files, dirs or apps differs from the stored values in the datafile, they will be corrected. Also these type of files weren't printed on a label. - Saving a datafile to a protected disk caused !DiskBase to quit without the file beeing saved. - When STOP was pressed during searching, the actual search stopped but the remaning disks were still counted untill the last one. - Click Select or Adjust on a label on the label-page will now show that label (same as the menu-entry 'Show Label') 0.69 (16 Oct 1993) - Added the possibility to include DOS-disc partitions and DOS- and Atari-formatted diskettes. The only drawback is that filenames in DOS- and Atari-format can have a length of up to 12 characters and the name-field in the !DiskBase datafile is only 10 positions. So the names will be truncated to 10 positions, conform copying these files to Acorn formatted disks. On the 'Add Disk' window is an option button with which you can decide to include or exclude DOSdisc partitions (filetype FC8). These are normally only found on harddisks. Adding DOS- or Atari-formatted floppies is always possible, no matter if the button is selected or deselected. - I made some changes in the 'Show Disk' area, to have a wider range of show-options. - If 'Show contents' is deselected, only disknames, date, free-space and number of files/directories/applications are given. - If 'Show contents' is selected, you have five suboptions to specify the level of contents you want to see. - If none of the five suboptions is selected, only files/dirs/apps in the root-directory of the disk are shown. (These files will also appear on the printed label) - Otherwise you will be shown the contents of one or more of the following items: - Directories - Applications - Archives - PackdDir - DOSdisc partitions - Some speedup is made by updating the activity window less frequently. - The Results-window now has the top-line and left-most character neatly aligned, so that not only a part of the characters will be shown. - Furthermore some bugfixes have been made: - Empty directories inside PackdDir-files could result in an invalid entry following the directory name, and/or the next file would be shown one level too deep. - CFS/Squash/SparkDir-files do in fact have two filetypes assosiated with them. (e.g. A basic file compressed with CFS has type BASIC and type CFS). Previously the search routine didn't find the original filetype of compressed files (BASIC in this case). - If a file had a wrong filetype of Archive or PackdDir and the file was very short (onlya couple of bytes) !DiskBase could get an Address Exception Error. - During loading a pre-0.69 datafile again a check will be made. The check done during loading of version 0.68 fixed a problem with deleted Squash- and SparkDir-files only partly. The counter for number of files on a disk was not updated. This could result in fatal errors during a search. 0.70 (25 Mar 1994) Changes made in this version of !DiskBase include: - Most actions during multitasking are speeded up by calling WimpPoll less frequently (once per 100 milliseconds). This results in a little decrease of responsiveness, but a great increase in speed in nearly all actions. Also the update of the Activity-window is reduced to once per second in most circumstances. - Interactive help now supported also on menu-items if !DiskBase runs under RISC OS 3. - Nearly all warnings and errors are now reported in a multitasking dialogue box, preventing other applications to freeze when !DiskBase reports an error. Keyboard input, including 'hot keys' are NOT passed to running programs to force you to acknowledge the window first, but other processes will continue. Also more sensible text is displayed on the button(s) in the error window instead of the default 'OK' and 'CANCEL'. - The presence of the font specified for printing labels is no longer checked during the load of the datafile, but when first opening the 'Print page' window. - In previous versions the end-of-file pointer wasn't reset to the last in use record, so there were situations possible that some records at the end of the saved file were empty, resulting in a too large file being saved. - Bugs removed: - which could keep the datafile open when a load failed. - that gave fatal errors when deleting a disk. - the label page was not cleared when a new datafile was loaded, resulting in unpredictable but often fatal errors. - when a label on de label page was removed while it's preview was shown, the preview window stayed open. 0.71 (19 Jul 1994) Some of the changes made in this version of !DiskBase are: - I finally implemented the code to examine the contents of archives created with PKZip. As with most other compession types I didn't have any info about the file format, but by decoding several files created with PKZip (on MS-DOS) and !SparkFS I was able to track down most bits and bytes of the 'directory' of a ZIP-file. I used PKZip version 2.04g and !SparkFS 1.25 (with Zip module 0.01) The Zip-formats tested are 'Zip No compression', 'Zip Shrink', 'Zip Implode' and 'Zip Deflate' in DOS-format and Archimedes-format. For compatibility with RiscOS 2 I had to write a procedure to convert DOS-formatted time and date to RiscOS format. This procedure will fail with dates beyond the year 2099. (I suppose this is long enough ;-) at least for RiscOS 2. On a RiscOS 3 machine the conversion is done using Acorn's SWI "Territory_ConvertOrdinalsToTime" and I don't know if this one fails in the far feature) If anyone has any other wishes to include decoding of other formats, please let me know, but if possible supply me a few examples of files in both compressed and uncompressed form or a detailed description of the format. - Added the filetype '&3FB' so that the new ArcFS-archives will be decoded as well as the old ones. (The file-format has not changed as far as I know, only the filetype was changed from &DDC to &3FB). - Fixed a bug in a procedure called when adding an archive failed. In these cases the entries added so far had to be removed, but for some entry-types the total amount of entries wasn't decremented, which resulted in incorrect STATUS displays and could lead to fatal errors during a SEARCH where the total number of entries is used as a counter in a loop. Loading a file created with an earlier version of !DiskBase will start a scan to correct the stored 'total number of entries' in that file. - Corrupted archives or very short files with an incorrect filetype of a compressed file (Archive, PackdDir, CFS, Squash etc.) could result in an unexpected error. I've changed the code to handle this situations better. - Added a detour to fix the '3D-Bug' when pressing 'Quit' when using the 3D-template. (Even if the BorderUtils-patch module is not loaded, !DiskBase won't hang your machine anymore) - When adding an already existing disk the RESULTS-window is now only closed if the question "Disk ... already exist. Update or Cancel" is answered with 'Update' but not if answered with 'Cancel'. 0.72 (17 Apr 1995) - The main change of this version is a new layout of the datafile, to be able to add DOS-files complete with extension (12 characters, 8 + / + 3) and to allow 11-character disknames as used in MS-DOS and in CD-ROM names. I had this change already in mind for some time, but because I also implemented code to add CD-ROM's to the datafile, it was a must now. Eventhough some CD-ROM's are especially made for RISC OS, they are allowed and sometimes have 11-character CD-ROM names. The problem was that if I would truncate the name to 10 characters, I would not be able to detect duplicates disknames, or I should have checked for the first 10 characters only. But in that case two names which differ only for the 11th character, would be wrongly marked as duplicates, so adding the second would automatically result in deleting the first one. (e.g. adding CLIPART_CD2 after CLIPART_CD1 would delete CLIPART_CD1). P.S. Eventhough DOS-formatted floppies can have 11 charecter names, only the first 10 are returned by 'SYS "OS_GBPB",5' for floppies, so this could result in the problem described above when adding DOS-formatted floppies with 11 character names (at least using DOSFS 0.43) !!! Because the layout change was needed to cope with the longer disknames, I decided to also change the length of filenames to 12 characters at the same time. Existing datafiles can be converted by running DBaseCheck. This program checks the datafile for integrity, and is able to repair some faults if it finds them. If the integrety is determined, it converts the file to its new layout if the datafile version is pre-0.72. A logfile of this DBaseCheck is created called 'LogHHMMSS' where 'HHMMSS' is the time the program was started. The resulting datafile is called 'CorrHHMMSS' if only corrections were needed, or 'ConvHHMMSS' if also conversion to the new layout is done. Please be aware that there is no conversion back possible, so to be on the save side, backup your old datafile for a while, just in case.... If you have to report bugs, caused by the conversion, please include the logfile of the conversion. - Upon loading a datafile a check is done to see if the totals for files, directories and applications are correct. In the past sometimes these values were incorrect resulting in all kinds of, mostly fatal, errors while doing a SEARCH. If you want to disable the check (yes it will take some time to check), modify 'SetEval DiskBaseCheck 1' in !Run to 'SetEval DiskBaseCheck 0'. - I've rewritten the code to add ZIP-files completely. After the release of version 0.71 I discovered two main problems with the previous implementation. First of all, when examining a ZIP-file created with !SparkFS, all entries are normally in alphabetical order, unless files are added later on. And ZIP-files created with MS-DOS zippers are hardly ever sorted. This resulted in very strange displays when these ZIP-files were added. The other main problem was that ZIP-files can have extra data tagged to the end of the file, and this type of files were not decoded by !DiskBase. - Also the code for using wildcards is changed. Now both '*' and '#' characters are allowed in any combination, where '#' represents any single character and '*' represents any string of 0 or more characters. - After receiving several requests shortly after each other, I added an option to configure the depth of the shown entrynames on printlabels. - Again several smaller bugfixes were made: - An invalid DOS-image resulted in a corrupt datafileif it was the last file of a disk. - Doing a SEARCH twice in a row could result in missing line(s) at the beginning of the RESULTS-window. - The RAMTransfer was blocked by not including the 'Message-RAMFetch' in 'Wimp_Initialise'. - In certain conditions the procedure loading datafiles could loop infinitely. - Showing free space on disks wasn't using OS_ConvertFixedFileSize, so displayed 159723 K in stead of 159 M. - Scroll requests for page-down or page-left did skip one line/character too much (not showing one line or row). - Several small cosmetic or speed increasing changes were made. 0.73 (13 Nov 1995) - In version 0.72 an old problem reappeared, resulting in the inability to add harddisks when certain SCSI-interfaces where used. If the SWI-prefix was different from the filingsystem-name, the following error occurred: "SWI name not known (internal error code 11850)". For this problem I made a small patch program, which fixed the program and modified the version to '0.72P'. This fix is of course also one of the bug-fixes for release 0.73. - One other main problem of 0.72 was the fact that corrupted or very large ZIP-files could grab extra memory which was was never returned to the Wimp if no longer needed or if the add failed for some reason. Now after adding a ZIP-file, at the end of adding a disk, or after some error situations, memory that is claimed before is returned to the Wimp if unused. - The templates used for reporting errors are modified to prevent keyboard input to appear in the error window. The error window is now also draggable to allow you to see what is under it, but the window will always pop up at the centre of the screen, and will be pushed on top of the window-stack. In the previous release an other task's window could be opened on top of the error window. Also the window title will now change to indicate the type of message being reported. - Adding DOS discs or CD-ROM's could result in the error: "Bad file name '...' (internal error code 18330)". This happened if the filename had an for RISC OS special character in its name, but which is allowed for DOS. (eg. @ # & etc.) This has been fixed now. - Fixed a problem for very small ZIP-files resulting in the message "Error 3 in Archive (ZIP)". - Several extra checks are made when adding ZIP-files to prevent corrupted ZIP-files resulting in unusual errors. Also changed all the messages to more or less meaningfull text instead of an error number. - The PAUSE button on the activity-window wasn't functioning any more. Fixed it. Also the activity window won't close now before an action is completely finished, including internal housekeeping. - When !DiskBase was quit from the taskmanager or the WIMP did a complete shutdown, while !DiskBase was active, !DiskBase kept running. I modified the code so now you have to abort the activity before !DiskBase can quit. Also when !DiskBase had unsaved data when a quit from the taskmanager or a WIMP shutdown was done, !DiskBase didn't react as it should. This has also been fixed 0.74 (13 Jun 1996) - The major change in this release is that when displaying the results of a DUPLICATES, the full pathname of the reported files are shown, and not only the names of the disks on which these files reside, so you can easely find the files shown. - Also the same (assembler) code that builds the info for the RESULTS window is now used when a SAVE of the RESULTS is done. In the past, a seperate (BASIC) procedure was used for this saving, so that the saved info could have a different layout. - The speed of saving RESULTS is also improved by not writing evry single line to disk, but using a 4K buffer, and write this to disk when it is (nearly) filled. - The sort that was done at the start of a DUPLICATES sorted one entry too less, resulting in the possibility that in some cases one entry was not shown as a duplicate. - I've found some CD's which do have 12 character CD-names. Part of the procedures of !DiskBase could cope with this, others failed when a 12 character name was added. This has been fixed - Finally, I've changed !DBaseCheck to be a WIMP application (!DBaseChk), in which the file to be checked, and the pathnames for the logfile and the converted file (in case a conversion to a newer format is needed) can be filled in by dragging or dropping files. The actual checking however is still not multitasking! I think it is not worth the effort to change this, for the occasional use of this application. 0.75 (14 Oct 1996) - The first problem in !DiskBase I encountered after upgrading from an A340 to a RiscPC, was that if a user has two different filing systems both having equal drive numbers, !Diskbase had no way of adding both disks. (e.g. I couldn't add my SCSI::4 as icon 4 pointed to ADFS::4 and although icon 5 in the 'Add Disk' window was also enabled, it did not point to SCSI::4). So I added some icons and logic to let the user select a filing system, after which !DiskBase will check the drives present for that particular filing system. - The static heap I used to use is changed to a sliding heap, which also makes use of Dynamic Areas if the program is run on a Risc PC. For the source and an explanation of this heap written by Alan Wrigley see "Risc User" volume 9, issue 1 (November 1995), and the modification in volume 9 issue 6 (May 1996), pg. 43. - As a result of a change in version 0.74, an explicit DELETE of a disk could cause a infinite loop, but deleting a disk by adding one with the same name didn't suffer from this. This is now fixed. - Clicking on lines of the RESULTS window when results of a DUPLICATES were shown, gave incorrect actions. This has been fixed now. - Several minor changed both cosmetic and functional were implemented as well. - One of the issues to be taken care of in a next release will be the use of the Wimp-font as configured on Risc OS 3.50 and above in the RESULTS window, without loosing the alignment of the column layout. This will probably need quite some change of the redraw code, but that was not feasible at the moment. - One more point is that I've always done my best to stay compatible with Risc OS 2.00, but as I've no way of testing this anymore, I will no longer try to be compatible with this Risc OS version. Even testing all code on Risc OS 3.10 myself will be quite hard to accomplish, but I will do all I can, or try to find some beta-testers for this.