Changes in The Vault 3.00

1. As already stated, it's written in C instead of Pascal. This makes The Vault run faster and smaller: The Vault 2.01 was over 90,000 bytes long, while The Vault 3.00 before its new features was just over half that. Even the Beta release is under 70,000 bytes. The Vault 3.00 should also use less memory for data storage because, thanks to the C language, it allocates only what it needs. All this means that The Vault 3.00 can run in even less memory than The Vault 2.01.

   The Vault 2.01 had a problem that it would often bomb and mess up the system after it exited. This was something to do with Pascal and GEM, and was not the fault of The Vault. Needless to say, because The Vault 3.00 uses C instead of Pascal, this bug is gone.

2. When you first run it, you should notice that The Vault 3.00 loads its help much faster. In addition, the help is now where you need it — every dialog box has a button labelled ``Help'', and selecting that button brings up an appropriate help screen. Many help screens have been removed from the main menu and moved to the ``Help'' button in a dialog box where they belong, and the remaining ones are now organized logically.

   Help screens are also cross-referenced, so you can view relevant help screens with buttons at the bottom of each help screen. To go to the help screen you came from, press ``Previous'' at the bottom of the screen. If you press ``OK'' and go back into the help system with the ``Help'' button again, you will end up on the same screen as you left the help system from, as if the help system were a book which you left open.

3. When looking for the help file VAULT.HLP, The Vault now looks for it in a folder specified in the environment variable VAULTDIR.

4. The licensing agreement which you see when you click on ``Terms'' after selecting ``About The Vault'' now uses the standard help box form and comes in readable-size type.

5. The dialog box you see when you click on a Backup or Copy action in the ``File'' menu is brand new. In order to back up multiple hard disk partitions on one backup set, it now lets you select many starting folders, each with its own list of folder patterns. When The Vault runs a backup, it backs up each of these starting folders separately into a different output folder on the backup set.

   The way you select your starting folder and folder patterns is now entirely mouse-based. The Vault displays two windows on the screen: one of the starting folders and the other of the folder patterns for the selected starting folder in the first window.

   When you have the starting folder window selected as the current one, the buttons in the middle (``Add'', ``Clear'', ``Insert'', ``Delete'', ``Edit'') let you manipulate the starting folders in obvious ways. ``Add'' adds another starting folder to the end of the list of starting folders displayed in the window and gives you a files selector to choose it. ``Clear'' clears everything from the currently selected window. ``Insert'' inserts a new starting folder immediately before the currently selected item. ``Edit'' lets you change the currently selected item using the file selector, and ``Delete'' deletes it.

   Similarly, when the folder patterns window is current, you can insert and delete new folder patterns. In this window, though, when you're given the file selector to select a pattern, you start at the currently selected starting folder and are not allowed to select a folder not included in the starting folder. The Vault takes the folder you select and removes the starting folder from the beginning of it, to give a folder pattern like you would type in The Vault 2.01. For example, if the selected starting folder were ``E:\R\'' and you selected ``E:\R\PROGRAMS\'' with the file selector, you would get PROGRAMS\ as the folder pattern. To set or unset the ``Files Only'' and ``Exclude'' switch (`#' and `!' in The Vault 2.01), click on the appropriate buttons, and you'll see it happen on the screen.

   Often, a starting folder or folder pattern will become too line to fit in the window. Then, you can use the scroll arrows next to each line to scroll the line left and write in the window.

   Because one backup can now have many starting folders and each one requires its own output folder, The Vault no longer lets you choose the output folder on a Backup, but rather generates it automatically from each starting folder. It takes the device name the folder is on as the first letter of the output folder, and then appends up to 7 letters of the input folder name. For example, from an input folder named ``C:\TMP\PROGRAMS'', The Vault would generate ``CPROGRAM'' as the output folder. Another example, The Vault would generate ``E'' as an output folder from the starting folder ``E:\''. If The Vault runs into a conflict between output folder names, it uses a different letter as the last letter of the output folder name until the conflict is resolved. For example, if it had to back up ``C:\TMP\PROGRAMS'' and ``C:\REAL\PROGRAMS'' on the same backup set, it would name the first output folder ``CPROGRAM'' and the second one ``CPROGRAA''.

   On a copy, (Full Copy or Incremental Copy), you do get to choose the output folder, but you may not use more than one starting folder. If you do, The Vault will copy from the first and complain about the rest.

   The Vault 3.00 now lets you select the full pathname of the backup history, on a line at the bottom of the screen. You can either type it in, or select it using the ``Select Backup History'' button. No matter what file you select, The Vault forces its extension to ``.HST'', and will write a ``.HST'' and ``.CTL'' file from it. For example, if you select ``C:\FOO.C'', The Vault will write ``FOO.HST'' for its backup history and ``FOO.CTL'' for its control file.

   At the bottom of the screen, you now have two lines of space instead of one to give The Vault wildcard patterns.

6. The Vault now formats skewed disks (more commonly known as Twisted) on TOS 1.2 or later if you like. It didn't do this in version 2.01 because I prefer FastFlop, which is faster than Twister and doesn't require that you format your disks specially.

   You can also format your disks up to 83 tracks, if you like. I don't reccomend this.

7. While The Vault is actually doing its work, the screen is much improved to show you more information about what The Vault is doing internally. At the top of the screen are the parameters you entered in. If they are too long to fit on the line, they are truncated, but only when displayed the screen; The Vault still remembers them all.

   In the middle of the screen, The Vault tells you which folder it's scanning, and which file it's reading. It can't scan and read at once, so one line is always blank. These two lines are easier to follow because, unlike in The Vault 2.01, they are not centered on the screen and therefore do not jump about as their lengths change.

   Most useful, at the bottom of the screen The Vault displays ``thermometer bars'' which show The Vault's approximate progress on the current disk. Internally, The Vault has always worked in three phases: first it scans the hard disk, planning what it will write on the floppy. When it's filled up the floppy in this packing phase, it starts to actually copy the files. But since The Vault has put its own floppy disk cache in the right place, The Vault actually only reads data from the hard disk during this phase. When the cache fills up (usually at the end of the disk for a Mega 2 or 4, or somewhere in the middle on a 1040 or 520), The Vault actually writes this data out to disk.

   The three thermometer bars at the bottom show how much of each phase The Vault has completed. They start out showing how much of the disk is already full, and end up at approximately the same place. Just from a glance, you can tell useful information from these bars. For example, if the ``Scanning'' thermometer has filled up partway and The Vault is on to copying, you know immediately that this is the last disk because The Vault left empty space at the end, and you know approximately how long this disk will take based on how full The Vault has packed it.

   The ``Writing'' thermometer bar poses a special problem to The Vault. While The Vault is writing to the disk, there is no good way to update the thermometer bar. Every time The Vault updates that thermometer bar, depending on which format floppy you're using and whether you're using FastFlop, it loses up to .2 seconds. I made a compromise and made The Vault update the thermometer bar every eight tracks it writes, costing up to 2 seconds per disk, which I feel is almost insignificant. Using the option ``Set Miscellaneous'' in the ``Options'' menu, you can set the number of tracks The Vault will write before it updates the thermometer bar. If you're using non-skewed disks without FastFlop, you should set this to 1 because The Vault doesn't lose any time on these disks in updating the thermometer bar. If you format your disks in some way to accelerate them, chances are updating the thermometer bar will slow down The Vault, so you'll want to set Max Tracks to a compromise like 8. The only way to tell for sure if using a smaller Max Tracks number slows down The Vault is to try it.

   When The Vault finishes, it now leaves the status box on the screen so that you can tell at a glance how much of the disk is full.

8. When The Vault finishes with a disk, it now rings a bell periodically, in order to alert you that it's ready for a new disk. It also rings the bell when it's finished with the backup. You can set the Ring Interval (the interval between two rings in 1/200ths of a second) using ``Set Miscellaneous'' under the ``Options'' menu.

9. All data files of The Vault now use a different format, although except for the help file, The Vault 3.00 is upwardly compatible with The Vault 2.01 data files.

   • The help file (VAULT.HLP) is now flexible in format and allows you to edit it easily, and even add additional help screens without changing The Vault. To begin a help screen, start the title line with a tilda character (`~') and the help screen's name. On the same line, give the names of the help screens you want to cross reference this one with, separated by colons. For example, if this help screen is named ``Foo'' and you want cross references to ``Bar'' and ``Neat Bar'', the title line of Foo should be: ``~Foo:Bar:Neat Bar''

     All lines between the title line and the next title line are part of the named help screen. The first line after the title line will be centered and is good for giving a title which the user will see at the top of the help screen. You may use up to 18 lines, not including the title, for the help screen. If you use fewer, The Vault will fill the rest of the lines with blank space. If you use more, The Vault will cut your help screen short, but will not crash. Currently, The Vault supports up to 35 help screens, althought that is arbitrary and it could support as many as you have energy to write.

   • The .VDF file format is also more robust. Each line consists of the name of the option, a colon, and the value of the option. A dollar-sign preceding the value indicates that it's a hexadecimal number. Options may be missing, in which case The Vault does not change that option when it loads the .VDF file. Options may also be in any order, although The Vault writes them in alphabetical order. If The Vault finds an option which it does not recognize, it will tell you and continue.

     With the new .VDF file format, any version of The Vault will be able to read any .VDF file created by any previous (or even future) version and make sense out of it, even though different .VDF files may have different options. For the experienced user, the .VDF file should now be easier to edit with a text editor because it's clear what every option is and how to change it. Of course, The Vault still reads help files from The Vault 2.01 automatically.

   • The backup history format is also more robust, allowing The Vault to be compatible with previous and future formats of this file. If The Vault 3.00 is allowed to write a new backup history, it will leave a lot of blankspace on each line of the header with a semicolon terminating relevant data. This is room for expansion. On old backup history files, The Vault 3.00 works just fine.

     Since The Vault picks the backup folder automatically, the line ``Last Backup Folder'' has been changed to ``Last Incremental Number'', and The Vault now only writes a number on that line. Thus, when using The Vault 3.00 for the first time, you may see a bit of garbage on the line after the semicolon. For example, in a history file with the line ``Last Backup Folder: EBACK.004'', after running an incremental backup with The Vault 3.00, you will see ``Last Backup Folder: 005;K.004''. Don't worry about the garbage after the semicolon; The Vault ignores it and will work just fine.

10. You can now halt The Vault at any time while it is backing up by holding down Control-(left)Shift-Alternate-Undo until it halts. Unfortunately, The Vault cannot give an alert box to confirm this but halts immediately, so halt The Vault with caution. While The Vault is actually writing to the floppy disk, it cannot ``see'' that you've halted it until it pauses to update the ``Writing'' thermometer bar, so it may respond sluggishly.

    Since The Vault halts immediately upon seeing your request without even dumping any caches, the disk it writes may or may not be a consistent TOS-format disk. If The Vault didn't start the ``Writing'' phase or spin the disk during either of the other phases, chances are that the disk is OK.

11. The Vault now takes command line arguments. When given the name of a .VDF file on the command line, The Vault will load the given file instead of VAULT.VDF when it starts up. This way, you can use the Install Application feature of the Desktop to start The Vault with the .VDF file of your choice. To do this, click on the icon for The Vault, select Install Application under the Options menu, and enter VDF as the document type. Then, when you double-click on a .VDF file, The Vault will run with your selected file pre-loaded.