Copyright: ® 1992-1994, Jonathan Carroll


Help Contents
Contents

Welcome

The RIP Family

Introducing RipSPACE

Registration & Contacting The Author

New In This Version

Procedures

Analyzing A Drive Or Path

Generating A File Report

Printing A Report

Saving A Report

Reference

Preferences

The ToolBar

Drives Window


The RIP Family

The RIP family of applications / utilities is a collection of shareware programs written for Windows and Windows NT.  Each is designed to fulfill a purpose in an elegant, easy-to-use fashion.

What you have now is RipSPACE.  Others include RipBAR and the soon-to-be-released, RipFIND.  All RIP applications have a registration fee which you are expected to pay if you continue to use them.  The amounts asked for are reasonable and I ask that you think twice about continuing to use something you haven't paid for.  None of the RIP applications have disabled functions, or annoying "Register Me" reminders-- so I leave it up to you.

To learn more about RipSPACE proceed on to the introductory sections of this help file.  Short advertisements for RipBAR and RipFIND are presented below:

RipBAR

RipBAR is in some ways, the Swiss Army knife of utilities.  It combines an application toolbar, command line launching, Drag & Drop server, memory and system information display, Post-It style notes, hot key support and more in a package that remains unobtrusive on your screen.

RipBAR is available in separate files for both Windows 3.1 and Windows NT.

RipBAR is an icon toolbar that you may set up with applications of your choice.  Configuration options include the ability to set up startup directory, and command line parameters.  Additionally, files may be dropped onto the application icons sitting on the bar-- causing the application to launch and open that file automatically.

The Windows 3.1 version displays the time, memory information, and the remaining resources available to the system.  The Resource Tracker (Windows 3.1 only) is included to allow you to monitor an application's use of memory and resources.

The Windows NT version displays the time, along with available physical and paged RAM.

In addition, RipBAR supports attaching sound to certain types of events, HotKey activation, program groups and much more.

RipFIND
RipFIND is a utility that will search your hard disk for the file(s) that you specify.  You may select search criteria, paths and file contents to look for.  Boolean operators on parameters are supported in addition to "Near to" functions.  Files that are found may be launched along with their creator application right from RipFIND.

Projected Release Of RipFIND : June 1994.

Jonathan Carroll


Introducing RipSPACE

RipSPACE is an application written for Windows & Windows NT that analyzes a drive and the space that each sub directory on it, consumes.  In other words, you'll now be able to find out how much space your Windows installation is taking up, or how much drive space you'll gain if you delete the WordPounder word processor you installed but never use.

RipSPACE also allows you to define file types that are to be included in a file report.  You can then tell how much total space is being taken up by certain file types-- i.e. Bitmaps, Dynamic Link Libraries and executable files.

Though RipSPACE is distributed as two separate versions depending on whether you're running Windows or Windows NT, the two use the same interface and incorporate the same features.  This help file is thus common between the two versions.

Please see the section titled Registration & Contacting The Author for information on how to reach me should you like to provide some suggestions or feedback.

Jonathan Carroll


Registration & Contacting The Author

Registration
RipSPACE For Windows is not free.  If you like RipSPACE and continue to use it, I ask for a $15 registration.  If this program could be more useful if something were changed or added, I'd like to hear from you-- see below for ways that you can reach me.  Either way, you have a complete and fully-functional version of RipSPACE-- there are no time limits, no annoying "Register Me" screens, and so I depend on your good will.

Contacting The Author
There are four ways to reach me :

Email / Internet
74017.3242@compuserve.com

CompuServe
user id : 74017,3242

GEnie
user id : J.H.CARROLL

Conventional Mail
Jonathan Carroll

28 Parkland

Pointe Claire, Quebec

CANADA H9R 2E8


New In This Version

Version 2.5

•	Fixes for those who had trouble printing reports to some kinds of printers.

•	RipSPACE saves all of its settings between sessions.

•	New Minimize/Restore option in Preferences.

•	Tab Dialog interface for convenient and intuitive access to customization preferences.

•	Bubble Help for toolbar items.

Version 2.1

•	Better handling of "Access Denied" messages under Windows NT.

•	Improved Report Printing capabilities.

•	Support for saving reports to disk.

•	May now generate reports for a path in addition to drives.

Version 2.0

•	Bug that caused RipSPACE to "miss" certain directories is fixed.

•	Preference settings include font choice, and file tracking.

•	File Reports provide information about user-specified file types.

•	Options to customize the sorting of directories within a report.

•	Improved results display.


Analyzing A Drive Or Path

To Start Analysis
To get started, double-click on a drive letter in the Drive Window.  A new window will come up and RipSPACE will begin work.  Depending on the size of your drive, this may take some time.

The last drive in the Drive window is marked Path.  Double-clicking on this will prompt you to type a path-- this generates a report for a path (including all sub-directories) instead of a physical drive.  (For more information, see Drives Window)

During The Analysis...
While RipSPACE is working, you can resume work elsewhere in Windows-- RipSPACE can continue processing "in the background" even as you work elsewhere.  Note however, that during an analysis, RipBAR's menus and tool bar are disabled-- no further work in RipSPACE is possible during the analysis.  You may however, operate the scroll bars in the windows where the report is being generated, and you may switch to other report windows.  In any case, you may switch to, or launch other applications.

Tip:
You may be able to speed up the analysis if you tell RipSPACE to minimize itself during the analysis process-- this way, RipSPACE doesn't have to update and draw the contents of the report window.  There is a Preferences option that automates the minimizing and restoring of RipSPACE's window-- see Preferences for more information.

After The Analysis & Interpretation
After the analysis is finished, you should see a display something like this :

As you can see, there is one line for every directory on the drive.   On the left, is the space that a directory is using on the disk.  Next, are the number of files, followed by he path (name) of the directory.

RipSPACE distinguishes between two types of directories : those that contain only files (shown with a closed folder picture, and printed in black), and those that contain files and other sub-directories (shown with an open folder picture, and printed in red).

Directories that hold other sub-directories are listed twice.  They get listed once to show you the number of files alone in the directory, and again to show all files in all sub directories.  Under Windows NT, or under Windows (when using a network) it is possible that you don't have access to certain directories.  When RipSPACE encounters this situation, the directory name will be accompanied with a "Access Denied" message.  The files in this directory will not be counted or added to the Disk Analysis Report.

In the above example, the window contains two listings for D:\.  The one in black is displaying information about files in the root directory of drive D:.  The one in red is displaying information about files in the root directory of drive D: and files in all of the sub-directories on D:.

Customizing, Saving & Printing Reports
This is all you need to start generating analysis reports of your own, but if you want to customize your reports a little, see the section entitled Preferences.  Then if you'd like to print or save this report, see Printing A Report, or Saving A Report.


Generating A File Report

RipSPACE can track a number of file types that you specify as it builds a drive analysis report for you.  To specify the types of files to track, you can invoke the Preferences dialog before generating the report.  (See Preferences)

Once in Preferences, select the Masks tab.  You may pick up to five file types to track.  Type the text you want to match in file names.  Note that you can't use DOS-style wild cards.  Text you type will be matched in the a file's entire file name-- i.e. both the eight character name and three character extension.  Here are a few examples :

Mask	Will Display

WIN	any files with WIN in the name. i.e. WIN.COM, AWIN.EXE, FILE.WIN

.WIN	any files with the WIN extension.  i.e. TEXT.WIN  FILE.WIN

(Note the period that precedes the second mask in the above example-- this is the key to the different results in the two cases.)

If you choose to have RipSPACE track files, a File Report will appear automatically at the end of the drive analysis.  After you've dismissed the File Report Dialog for a particular Drive Analysis Report, you can view it again by clicking the File Report icon in the tool bar (Pictured above).

The File Masks remain in effect for any future report you generate-- until you click on the Clear Masks button in the Preferences dialog.


Printing A Report

To print a Drive Analysis Report, choose Print from the File menu, or click the Printer icon on the tool bar (pictured above).  This will print the active report. (So you must already have generated a report-- see Analyzing A Drive Or Path)  RipSPACE will display the standard Windows Print Dialog.  Choose the printer (if you have more than one attached) you want to direct the output to, and choose OK.

In the printed reports, the analysis for a single directory containing the files in it, is printed normally, while the analysis for a directory and all of its sub-directories is printed with an asterisk.  This corresponds to the entries printed in red, in a Drive Analysis Report window.


Saving A Report

To save a Drive Analysis Report, choose Save from the File menu, or click the Disk icon on the tool bar (pictured above).  This will save the active report. (So you must already have generated a report-- see Analyzing A Drive Or Path)  RipSPACE will display the standard Windows File Save Dialog.  Choose a file name and location, RipSPACE saves the report in plain ASCII format.

In the saved report, the analysis for a single directory containing the files in it, is printed normally, while the analysis for a directory and all of its sub-directories is printed with an asterisk.  This corresponds to the entries printed in red, in a Drive Analysis Report window.


Preferences

To invoke the Preferences dialog, select Preferences from the Options menu, or click the appropriate tool bar icon (pictured above).

Preferences allows you to customize the way reports will be presented.  You can also specify files that RipSPACE will provide additional information for.

The following dialog appears :

RipSPACE's options are grouped into four categories.  To select a category, click on the corresponding tab.

Explanations for the various options are grouped below just as they are in the Preferences dialog.

Related Topics:

General

Sort

Font

Masks


General

Save Settings On Exit
Select whether RipSPACE options (sorting, file masks, etc.) are saved each time you quit RipSPACE so that they are restored the next time you use the program.

Minimize While Working
Selecting this option causes RipSPACE to minimize to an icon while it performs any drive analysis.  On some systems, the analysis will run more quickly as RipSPACE doesn't need to update the report window while it's working.

Restore When Finished
Selecting this option causes RipSPACE to automatically restore itself from iconized state after a drive analysis is completed-- usually used in conjunction with Minimize While Working.


Sort

Specify how RipSPACE orders Drive Analysis listings-- either Alphabetically by directory name, or by the Size of the directory.


Font

Choose the font that the drive analysis list will be displayed in.  Do this by clicking on the Choose button.  The standard Windows Font Chooser dialog is displayed.  This is also the font used should you decide to print a the report.  You can specify a new font for every new report you generate.


Masks

In addition to  generating a list of directories and the disk space that they consume, you can specify file types that you want included in a File Report .  This way, you can quickly get an idea of what types of files are consuming large amounts of space.  For more information, see Generating A File Report.


The ToolBar

The ToolBar is the strip of icons along the top of the RipSPACE window.  They provide convenient one-click access to menu items.  The tool bar should look like this :

From left to right, they are

Preferences, Generating A File Report, Printing A Report, Saving A Report, Help, and Exit.

As you move your mouse over the icons, a "bubble" will appear explaining what clicking the icon will do.


Drives Window

The Drives window looks like the following :

Use the scroll bar on the right to view more drives (if any) connected to your system.  Double clicking on a drive begins a Disk Analysis Report for that drive.  (See Analyzing A Drive Or Path)

The last "drive letter" in the list is actually titled Path.  Double-clicking this, brings up the following dialog :

Type in a valid path to the directory you want analyzed.  Press OK if you'd like to continue with the report, otherwise, press Cancel..