Directory Opus Magellan

You'd have to be living on a desert island or immersed in the ignorance of Windows if you haven't heard of Directory Opus. Two years ago, GP Software broke all the moulds set by traditional file managers to give us Directory Opus 5. While some were keen to take the leap, many others found Opus 5 to be a little too different for their liking. At the time, I wasn't really sure either way, but recently I thought "what the hell" and forked out for the new "Magellan" version.

Installation gives you several options. You can either install Opus in it's own little directory which you can run whenever you want to, or you can have it placed additionally in the WBStartUp drawer to be available every time you boot. The third alternative is the one that appears to have rocked the Amiga community more than some thought possible -actually replacing Workbench. Now my mentioning of this concept will make fuddy-duddies the world over say "dah!" to the possibility of stealing away something that is to the Amiga what configuration problems are to the PC. I must confess to being a little dubious myself of anything that claims to do this, but after some consideration I thought it best to keep an open mind and at least try it out.

On my system, I notice that Opus takes approximately 79K of chip RAM (although goodness knows what for) and about 974K of fast RAM. This was tested by disabling Workbench Replacement Mode, which is possible by holding down Shift while booting. Although this is by no means a small amount, it's not bad considering what it can do (and that it has to re-implement some (albeit very small) things that usually reside in ROM). On disc, the directory takes just under two megs, which isn't really a big bite out of your hard drive space.

The version I got came with two manuals: one for Opus 5.5 (a ring bound manual of just over 250 pages) and the other 50 page addendum manual. After reading them both from cover to cover, I found the manuals quite comprehensive without being too wordy or boring. The only thing that really bugged me is that the author didn't seem too certain of the technical level of the Opus user. One chapter in particular begins with a brief discussion on what a file is, and then a few pages later starts directing the reader to look at C header files! I can see that the author is trying to reach an intermediate user, but I'm not completely convinced that this is achieved. However, pitching such documentation at the right technical level was never going to be easy but the manual has a good stab at it nevertheless. After all, how many computer books have you read that start off talking about something that's so immensely basic, it's insulting and then shoots off explanations that are barely comprehensible. The Opus manual isn't like that as the English is largely very clear. I did find myself a little overwhelmed with the documentation for the ARexx interface at one point, but as there are so many functions available, it's hard not to! One thing that is sorely missed from the addendum manual, though is the index! Despite the fact that this is a comparatively small booklet, I'm still not very keen on leafing through the entire book (or the contents pages) to find what I want.

Multitasking ? Boy does this thing multitask! Not only does Opus multitask in the way you'd expect (ie. when windows are busy copying or formatting), but all the other windows you could possibly open are completely modeless (ie. you can still use Opus while that window is open). It's truly fantastic, if a little confusing at times when you have about a dozen different windows open! It's hard to describe just how well it does multitask, but trust me, it's fluid.

As far as configuration is concerned, Opus has an excellent and comprehensive range of tools to change just about every aspect of the program. In the event of there not being a mechanism for acheiving what you want (and from what I can tell, such instances are rare) chances are, if there's something that you want twiddled, then the programmers appear to be very receptive to user suggestions, which is always an indication of a quality product.

When using Opus, you'll spend most of your time working with "listers". Listers are basically windows which contain listings of files (just like Workbench, and of course other file managers). Listers contain pictorial toolbars at the top of their window which can contain pretty much anything you desire. It's more usual though to put functions to select, copy, delete and rename in there. While this is quite convenient, I find many of the icons exceptionally cryptic. In fact, for a long time I still only used a few of them because I couldn't remember what the others did without leafing through the manual! That's not really a major problem as it's perfectly possible to replace the toolbar icons with more familiar-looking creations of your own, or as in my case, just ditch the crap ones.

I find it extremely disconcerting that Opus seems to be moving towards an Amiga implementation of Windoze. There is plenty of evidence to support this, including the recent addition of Start menus and those little pointy arrows that get overlayed onto icons that are left on the desktop. People who aren't familiar with PCs (ie. the people that think "they're not that bad") will say that Win 95/NT does have good points. I've yet to find them myself, and so I remain unconvinced. I just hope that this doesn't give the remaining Amiga faithful an inferiority complex! Having said that, some of the problems with Windoze are related to the shonky file typing system (which, like early versions of rival file manager DirWork, rely on matching the filename extentions ie. .xxx). As Opus uses a rock solid file typing system, this sort of messing about is completely eliminated. Provided the actual type of file you're dealing with does have tell-tale markings (like IFF ILBM pictures starting with the word "FORM", followed by a few bytes, followed by "ILBM"), the file typing system is infallible. If Opus still matches filetypes wrongly then your filetype is incorrect. It's that simple.

Generating file types is usually a task for the more technically-minded, or at least, those with access to file format documentation. GP Software have obviously taken this into consideration because they have thoughtfully included a nice little solution: the FileType sniffer. This is a smart piece of software which lets you load in a number of files which it then compares parts of (including the filename) to find markings that are common to all the files listed. Obviously, this isn't as efficient as doing it yourself, but it's a valuable tool nonetheless and if nothing else gives novices a few ideas as to how the system works. The only annoying quirk with this program is that the file requester for adding more files to the list under scrutiny doesn't accept multiple files. So if you have a dozen files that you want to stick into the program, you have to bring up the requester every single time and select the files yourself rather than shift-clicking. A minor oversight, but a pretty darn annoying one!

Opus also provides a system of pop-up menus. At first glance, this appears to be yet another Windoze-esque novelty. In fact, pop-up menus are actually useful. Extremely useful. You see, I only have a two-button mouse and so if I want anything more than a simple double-click operation, I'd have to go selecting buttons in a button bank. This isn't the case with pop-up menus. Pop-up menus are designed so that you can extend the number of things you can do to a particular file type without adding extra buttons. So, for example if you had a file type for IFF ILBM pictures, your pop-up menu could include things such as "View with MultiView", "View with ViewTek", "Edit in PPaint", "Edit in Photogenics" and so on. I've been setting them up for just about everything, and they're fantastic. It saves a lot of clicking around for applications and so on. With the aid of an ARexx script, things can be even easier. Initially, I didn't get along with pop-up menus very well because of the annoying delay between reaching sub-menus, but fortunately the manual had a solution in the form of an environment variable (this is new in Magellan, by the way).

Opus has an absolutely fantastic ARexx command set (if at first a little daunting due to it's huge flexibility). Even if ARexx isn't your thing (it isn't really mine!), chances are if theres something you want done with listers, it can be and someone's already done it. The ARexx interface is extremely well thought out and very thorough. In fact, it's hard to think what can't be done with it in the right hands. It really is a work of art. Just to prove it, Opus comes with a number of useful examples. The most commonly used of these is the archive module (written by Edmund Vermeulen). This effectively turns Lha and LZX archives into directories (although they still show up as files in the lister). Double-click on the archive and it lists the archive contents in a lister which you are then able to copy, delete and access the archived files with. Wow! Actually, this isn't a wholly new idea as there has been an archive handler on the Aminet for ages (in fact, it's used on the Aminet CDs), but it's never been updated to support LZX archives. The Opus ARexx implementation does of course support LZX and would have been a darn site easier to write than it's filesystem counterpart. I had a little dabble with Opus's ARexx interface myself, but I didn't come up with anything particularly impressive. Just the same, I found the instruction set quite accessible, if a little unforgiving at times.

A small feature that is nevertheless exceedingly useful is the FTP module. This is simply an FTP client integrated into Opus listers. This gives you a tremendous NFS-style transparency in that you can copy, delete, and everything else as if you had the remote server on your own hard drive (albeit a little slower). Great stuff! There is also an address book feature which lets you keep track of commonly-used FTP sites. It also lets you store passwords to sites where a login is required, so I decided to find the configuration file that is generated by the address book. I was a little disturbed to find that the configuration file isn't encrypted in any way. However, for me this isn't a major problem as I am the only one using my computer for anything remotely remote. If this isn't the case for you, it's best to type in your passwords manually (although this is a bit of a pain in the arse, especially if you have passwords like mine!).

Opus's user interface cannot be faulted as it's about as intuitive as you could get. Everything can be accessed through familiar keyboard shortcuts (cunningly chosen so that people using an Opus Workbench will be able to keep to the same pattern of working as they did before without having to learn a new set of keys), and the obligatory drag-and-drop interface. The drag-and-drop system is actually very useful for re-arranging menus and so on, but it is also possible to use it for copying buttons, Workbench icons, and loads more. To quote a rather sad sample from the equally sad OS/2 Warp distribution, "It's as simple as draaaag and drop!".

There is a feature that lets you turn off icon borders and icon labels for individual icons, but I was rather dubious of the fact that the manual appeared to suggest that such status information was held within fields within icon data files that are "accidentally set" (by whoever created them). Without verifying this, I wouldn't like to comment too much on it, but if it does what I think it does, the word "hack" springs instantly to mind as such practise is usually considered taboo. However, seeing as such a thing is only optional and probably wouldn't cause tremendous problems in the future anyway (one would hope), it's not a major problem. It just struck me as very unorthodox (if indeed this is the case).

It's not all silky multitasking and amazing configurability, though. Unfortunately, Opus does appear to have a few bugs. I can't put my finger on all of them just yet, so it's perfectly possible that some problems are actually resulting from external programs such as hacks and commodities. Some problems are definitely due to Opus, for example attempting to access any drawer containing soft linked items (such as those I use with AutoAppMenu) will crash Opus every time. I realise soft links have always been quasi standard on the Amiga, but crashing because you don't support them is a little extreme. This has been fixed slightly in the 5.62 patch in that soft links no longer crash the program, but they still don't seem to be wholly implemented as they don't quite work correctly. Actually Opus gets a good workout on my system, and so it holds up pretty well considering. Some of the few remaining bugs even after the 5.62 patch are still pretty damn annoying, even if they don't crash my system.

Opus has it's own internal mechanism for providing soft links. Unfortunately, the implementation is disturbingly similar to the clumsy system used by Win '95 (ie. .LNK files). This basically involves having a little file that references the other one using some internal Opus mechanism. The question is "what's wrong with AmigaDOS links ?". After all, what's the point of adding yet another type of link that's supported by, err, one program when you could use hard links that are supported by every other program or soft links that are supported by many others ?

Something I ought to point out is that although much of what I've spotted may well be bugs in Opus, there are many problems associated with replacing Workbench. Therefore, commodities, hacks and patches that use slightly unorthodox methods to refine the functionality of Workbench will either fail, or not do what they're supposed to do. Conceivably, such programs can also interfere adversely with Opus. System legal programs are however fine. In fact, I was surprised that even my little offering, AutoAppMenu appeared to work without a hitch (if that's possible). Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of GP Software to get Opus to behave more favourably with hacks such as MCP, the "Activate on Workbench Title" that MCP offers sadly no longer works with my Opus Workbench.

Now, in defence of the programmers, it has to be said that writing let alone debugging multitasking software is phenomenally problematic, especially when that software can keep spawning even more multitasking processes. I certainly wouldn't like to be the one looking through that source code! However, there is one particular (albeit cosmetic) bug that is rather blatant. I'm not entirely sure what to think of that one, but as it doesn't do the system any harm (and that after so many revisions it hasn't been sorted which would seem to suggest a problem at my end), I'm quite prepared to let it go for the time being. If it was a crashy bug, that would be something else entirely.

Recently, I visited GP Software's web page and was pleased to see that they had patches for my version of Opus -something I've not seen from any Amiga company since Europress used to give out such patches for AMOS. Having looked through the list of bugs that have been fixed and features that have been added, it seems clear to me that GP Software have been exceedingly busy giving people the software they want. Additionally, after looking at their web pages, it seems that they're very keen to encourage people to help them fix bugs and submit their own ARexx scripts and so on. They'll even offer an Opus T-Shirt (and it's a very nice one, too -Greg was kind enough to give me one at last year's WOA show) to the person with the best script each month.

At first glance, I'd disagree with anyone that insists that Opus can be used to full benefit by beginners. Now that I think about it though, it seems that Opus is a very scalable system. Although it would be far from accessible (if not daunting) for a novice, anyone who is prepared to persevere will eventually get to use the program to it's fullest potential. Pretty much like the Amiga itself, really.

If you briefly ignore the fact that Directory Opus is probably the only remaining commercial file manager (dare I use the term), it's more than evident that a great deal of work has gone into the product, and it still enjoys dedicated and continued development. In my book, this alone is worth the fifty quid. Actually, after using Opus for some time and slowly adding the functionality that I've always wanted from Workbench, it's hard to imagine how I could go back to a vanilla Workbench. Opus has truly turned around the way I work, and I know that countless other people that I have spoken to are in the same position. The only comparable commercial file manager, DirWork (which started off as a shareware product) and is also antipodean in origin, appears to have been given up as it seems that Chris Hames is now concentrating on PC Task. Well, there's no accounting for taste... If memory serves, Opus also sprang from PD -a program called JPDir, I believe. Anyway, enough history, Opus is certainly the future. Just squash some of those mildly annoying bugs and people will soon forget what that Workbench thingy was all about.

Andrew Elia