Introduction CopyrightRegistration Introduction Features Requirements Installation | Usage BasicAdvanced | Other Important Stuff About MUIDevelopment History Credits Bugs |
SimpleFTP was developed solely by Rick Hodger (rick@thehub.u-net.com), all code is original and not based on any other program or source code.
All information regarding the File Transfer Protocol was gathered from RFC 959, and SimpleFTP tries to follow these standards as best as possible.
SimpleFTP is Copyright (©) 1999, R Hodger. All rights reserved.
Noone involved with the creation of this product, can be held responsable for the use or misuse of any part of this archive/package.
No part of this archive can be distributed an an altered state, the archive must be kept as originally created, containing the following files: SimpleFTP (executable), SimpleFTP.info, SimpleFTP.html, README.TXT.
Permission is granted for SimpleFTP to be distributed by AmiNet, either via electronic transmission or stored on media.
Permission is given to Wirenet Ltd. to distribute this archive, but only to customers of their services.
Distribution in any form is not permitted, without written permission from the author. Illegal distribution may result in legal action.
SimpleFTP is shareware. A lot of time, effort and rebooting has gone into SimpleFTP, anyone listed in the credits is welcome to claim a free copy. Registration costs UK£10, and I'm not going to go into all that business about "If after 30 days you haven't registered you must uninstall this software" crap, it annoys the hell out of me, so why should you have to put up with it?
Anyway, If you don't want to register, you don't have to. I refuse to put any sort of time limit on any program, you'll have a full version of the program minus some important bits. If you're happy using the unregistered version, then why should I force you to re-install the damn thing every month or so?
Back to the plot, if you want to register, send UK£10 or whatever your local equivelent is to:
Richard Hodger
10 Dermott Gardens
Comber
Newtownards
County Down
Northern Ireland, UK
BT23 5LH
Whereupon I will send you the information you need to unlock SimpleFTP.
FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol". This is method of transferring files between computers, usually across the Internet, and so requires that you have a TCP/IP stack of some sort.
This is also the usual method of setting up web-pages and web-sites, files are created locally and then transfered to the server using an FTP client.
More importantly though, it enables you to log onto "anonymous" sites, containg vast resources of software, such as AmiNet.
| · | Easy to use |
| · | Uses MUI for configurability |
| · | Compatible with many older servers that can cause problems with newer clients |
| · | Keeps a list of "favourite" FTP sites |
| · | High speed transfer of files, including a special mode for even faster transfers |
An extra feature, to come in a future version, is a site-to-site transfer of files. For example, download straight from aminet into your web-space!
MUI v3.8+ (Including copies of BetterString.mcc and Busy.mcc
A working internet set-up (Including a TCP/IP stack such as Miami)
For the more advanced features, some technical knowledge would help
Very simple, simply extract this archive into it's own directory, where ever you want. The only files it needs to work are: "SimpleFTP", "SimpleFTP.info" and "SimpleFTP.sites". To use drag & drop functions, you will need the directory titled "icons" as well.
Once the files have been extracted over, you will need to edit the tooltypes. To do this, left-click SimpleFTP's icon once, and then select "Information" from the "Icons" menu on Workbench. From there you need to set the tooltype starting "EMAIL="" to whatever your current e-mail address is, this is needed connecting to anonymous servers.
Note: The other tooltype(s) are explained in the advanced users section.
Advanced: "SimpleFTP.sites" is a text file that contains your saved list of FTP sites. It is editable, but it is important that between each entry and empty line starting with "#" is inserted. This marks the start of a site entry.
Add a New Site
To add a new FTP site to SimpleFTP is pretty easy, just follow these simple steps:
1) Make sure you are on the "Site Manager" page.When you want to connect to your new site, simply select the site of your choice in the "Site Manager" and click "Connect".
Downloading and Uploading
When downloading, select the files you want (On a default MUI installation, you can select multiple files by holding in the shift key while selecting the files) and click once on the "Receive" button. SimpleFTP will then download each file one after the other.
When uploading, you must be sure that you are allowed to upload to that directory. To upload you click the "Send" button once. It will then pop-up a file requestor asking you to select what files you want to upload. It will then upload each file one after the other.
Navigation
The bar along the top of the FTP page shows you your current location, eg. "/pub/amiga" - pressing the "Parent" button will take you to the parent directory, eg. "/pub".
Should you want to update the directory listing, simply click the "Refresh" button, the program will do the rest.
Sub-directories are always high-lighted, and do not have a size. To change into one of these sub-directories, simply double-click on it's name.
Note: This section will assume you are experienced in using an FTP client, and that you also have some knowledge of file-systems and AmigaOS in general.
Transfer Modes
The transfer mode is how files are transmitted by, or received by the FTP server. Two standard modes exist, Binary and ASCII.
On the "FTP" page, there is a cycle gadget which defaults to "Auto", you use this to change between transfer modes.
| Auto | This attempts to determine whether the file being received is an ASCII file, or Binary. Please note that this method is not yet foolproof, and should it fail it will default to Binary. |
| ASCII | When using this mode, carrage returns and line-feeds are translated into the UNIX equivelent. Binary files transfered via this stand a good chance of being corrupted on arrival. |
| Binary | The vast majority of files will be transferred through this method. It should be used for archives, images, sound samples etc etc. |
Tooltypes
"CACHE_FILES_IN_MEM"
This determines how SimpleFTP saves downloaded files to disk. If set to "0" it will save the data progressivly to disk in 4 kilobyte blocks. This means that should something go wrong, you can "resume" the transfer without losing any of the data so far downloaded.
However, setting this to "1" will mean that files will not be saved to disk until after the transfer has completed. Although this means that if you should crash/disconnect, you will not be able to resume the download it makes the transfers much faster. This will really only be of use to people with fast, reliable connections such as ISDN or a network connection to the internet.
Note: Localised tests show the progressive mode to have a maximum of about 80-90kb per second, while the other mode gives about 120-130kb per second. Tests performed on a 040 (40Mhz).
UPLOAD_ICON
When you are connected, SimpleFTP will add an icon to your desktop named "Upload to [sitename]", this will allow you to upload to the current directory of whatever site you are on simply by dragging any number of files to this icon.
This tooltype sets what image SimpleFTP will use for that icon, it needs to be in the standard Workbench Icon format. The one set by default is "progdir:icons/upload", note that the name is missing the ".info" part!
Logging
The "Log" page will show you a rough log of the interaction between the client and the server. Should you find a bug, please try to include a copy of the log in your report.
ARexx
At present there are no ARexx commands.
SimpleFTP uses Magic User Interface (MUI) by Stefan Stuntz. MUI is shareware, details of registering and the MUI Copyright can be found in the MUI archive.
SimpleFTP uses the MUI custom class "Busy.mcc" by Klaus Melchior, and is (C) 1994-96 by Klaus Melchior.
SimpleFTP uses the MUI custom class "BetterString.mcc" by Allan Odgaard and is (C) 1998 by Allan Odgaard.
| 0.1 - | First version, internal only. Could just about list directories. |
| 0.2 - | Site Manager working. Rudimentary, slow uploading and downloading. |
| 0.3 - | Super-fast transfers. Bug in directory listings corrected. |
| 0.4 - | Minor functions added, eg. deleting, make dirs etc. |
| Andrew "Assembler Andy" Bell | General encouragement (eg. "Hurry up and write that FTP client, I can't get AmFTP to work!") and loads of testing. |
| Jason "Caradog" Hayman | For putting up with my dodgy software and saying "Make sure you copyright it to Pagan Software!" |
| Neil Bothwick | For the excellent Wirenet Internet service. |
If you find a bug, please send any information to my e-mail address: rick@thehub.u-net.com and try to include a log file if you could get one.
I'd also appreciate the details of the server you were using when the bug occured. But don't bother if it doesn't allow anonymous users.
There are a few known bugs, but the only one you should ever encounter is if you have a very slow connection, or there is a lot of traffic on your modem. You'll only get maybe half a directory listing, if this happens just hit the refresh button.