Atari Forever 4/Atari Forever 4.zip/Atari Forever 4.iso/PD_THEMA/HARDDISK/TURTL320/UNTURTLE.DOC

Text File | 1998-03-14 | 8KB | 147 lines

                         Documentation for The UnTurtle!
                         (a DragonSoft Software Program)

          Users of  hard drives  have been having a dilemma for a long time.
     At least, users of the Turtle1 backup program.  You  see, while  it was
     quite easy  to back up the hard  drive, restoring it  remained tedious.
     The  desktop was a pain,  because it kept  creating  nested folders, or
     kept giving conflicting name reports  --  neither of which were greatly
     appreciated.   Or,  you had to do  clicking and  dragging all  over the
     place.  Even with M_DOS <plug, plug>, it was still tedious, because you
     still had  to create all  the folders, then  copy each folder, one at a
     time.  Now, however, life just got easier.

          Behold ...  THE UNTURTLE!  ( I believe background music from 2001:
     A Space Odyssey would fit nicely, don't you? )

          With The  UnTurtle, the  un-backing-up of  hard drives  is a snap.
     Well,  actually, it's at most a couple  of keypresses and maybe a click
     or two of  the mouse.  It copies whole  disks, folders... anything  you
     want to do, more or less.  It only uses wildcards, and it only does all
     files ( even though  it DOES have a query  option ).  If you want to be
     picky, get M_DOS.

          The UnTurtle was specifically  designed to complement Turtle.  The
     source path defaults to A:\, and the destination path defaults to what-
     ever drive UNTURTLE.PRG was loaded off of.  Both the source and default
     paths are editable text fields; the up/down arrow keys switches between
     the two, as  does the TAB key.  Hitting ESC  will clear the field, etc.
     The UnTurtle expects  all files, so if you do not have a last character
     of "\" on both the source and  destination paths, it will put one there
     for you (i.e. do NOT enter a path of "....\*.*"; unless you like seeing
     confused computers).  This means it will  not allow default directories
     -- G: will not access the folder on drive G  that was last accessed  by
     GEM, it will give the root directory  of drive G.   I don't see this as
     a very big handicap.

          The other options from  this main  ( and  only )  menu are  Copy (
     default button), Query, Quit, Overwrite, and Set Time/Date Stamp.  Copy
     starts the whole shebang; Quit doesn't; Query asks  you if  you want to
     copy the file, for every file (doesn't have much use for Un-Turtle'ing,
     but it  could be used in other  applications of a folder copier); Over-
     write, when selected,  will tell The UnTurtle  to not look for existing
     files  (otherwise, you will  get an 'Overwrite <filename> ?' alert  box
     every time The UnTurtle finds an existing file); and Set T/D Stamp tog-
     gles  whether or not to preserve the time/date stamp (when selected, it
     does -- that's what it defaults to ).  I have this on a toggle because,
     if you're copying TO a floppy, you probably  don't care about time/date
     stamps, and it will slow it down  a bit.  Hard  drives are  fast enough
     to not  make much of a  difference.  At least, MOST of them are.  Also,
     the file  COPYFIX.PRG on the ICD  Host Adaptor disk preserves the time/
     date stamp automatically, so you don't need The UnTurtle to do this.
     ________________________

               1 Turtle is copyright 1987, George R. Woodside






          After you tell it to Copy, it will first off get the  total number
     of files, folders, and bytes it  has to copy -- just like the desktop's
     Show  Info on a disk icon does.  Then, it shows  you its  results,  and
     proceeds to copy ALL files from the path you specified on down.  Nested
     folders and files and all that  are supported, of course.  Recursion is
     used to do this.  The first thing it  does is make a linked list out of
     all the folders in  the current folder.  Then, it  does the same  thing
     with the files, copies them, and recursively calls upon itself for each
     folder in the previously mentioned linked list.  Since the program uses
     linked lists, there is virtually no limit to the number of files it can
     handle.  Or folders, for that matter.

          All you have to do at this stage is sit back and watch the numbers
     go down.  It decrements the Folders: counter right BEFORE  it ?recurses
     on itself.  I'm not totally sure if this is the right way to do it, but
     it looked better/more realistic than doing it AFTER the recursive call.
     And, it works...  You can abort at any time by hitting the ESC key.  It
     will stop copying after it's finished with  the current file.  UNTURTLE
     will  also abort if it gets any type of error during the copy.  The Un-
     Turtle  determines if  an error  occurred during the  copy if the bytes
     written is  not equal the bytes read, or if it can't  find the path you
     specified.

          Once all that's done, whether it finished naturally or not, and IF
     you used a  floppy as the source, you  will get an alert  box asking if
     you want to use the same parameters. Hitting RETURN means yes. Then, it
     starts all over, presumably  AFTER YOU  SWITCHED DISKS...  Here's where
     The UnTurtle is really useful.  When it has creating the necessary fol-
     ders, it will get an error if that folder already exists.  And UNTURTLE
     will promptly ignore it and go on with the copy.  I.e., to un-back-up a
     partition,  just set the  source and  dest paths,  and the  options you
     want, hit RETURN, and switch  disks every  now and then.  Neat, huh?  I
     did not include a Delete File After Copy, because it would also have to
     delete the folders.  If you  want to  delete the source  path, just use
     M_DOS <my, I plug my  own programs a lot, don't I?>.  (if the error  is
     something different than 'folder already exists,' then you will be told
     about it and The UnTurtle will abort the copy)

          Another little note  of minor importance:  The UnTurtle  will pre-
     serve the original order of files also.  I.e., the files will be copied
     to their new path in the same order that they appear in the source dir-
     ectory.  This is useful for, say, AUTO folders maybe.

          Some more notes, now that version 1.3 is done... Firstly, the copy
     buffer has been increased from 32K to 256000 bytes, which speeds things
     up somewhat.   This of course means you need at least 256K of memory to
     run The UnTurtle.  I don't see this as a problem. Also, there was a bug
     in how it  handled Query copies; that has been fixed.  Lastly, the pro-
     gram now asks you if you want to Query the file BEFORE it checks to see
     if you  want to overwrite the  existing one (provided, of  course, that
     that file actually exists).  This makes more sense this way, in my hum-
     ble opinion; why ask you if you want to overwrite the file if you might
     not even want to copy it, right?  Right?  Hellooooooo?






          That's about  all there is to it.  Although, like M_DOS, you can't
     use this with Turbo ST.  Well,  you CAN, but you run the risk of having
     a lock-up, which can be nasty if it  happens after a file creation, and
     before it closes said file.   I don't  know why, but Personal  Pascal's
     Draw_String command and Turbo ST  just  do  not  get  along  very well.
     Sometimes they behave, but not all of the time.

          This product  is not  officially Shareware,  but if  you have this
     incredible ( and incredibly rare, it seems ) urge to send in some money
     for a  useful program, I would not mind at all if you sent $10 or what-
     ever you feel it's worth to:

          Mike Matthews
          7 Manorvale Court
          Rockville, MD  20853

          I hope you enjoy this program...

                       Mike Matthews, DragonSoft Software