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File Magician V3.5 by Terry Bullard (c) 1993-1994 For Windows 3.1 This program is Shareware Release Date: Nov. 29, 1993 Archive File Status: Documentation: Unregistered File Magician V3.5 - Unregistered Evaluation Period - 10 days Welcome to File Magician V3.5! As I've promised in the past to keep updating File Magician with improvements and additions, here is additional proof! This is the fourth release of FM, with each release containing huge additions to the program. Version 3.5 is no exception and perhaps the largest update so far, over 130K added to the executible! One of my other promises was NOT to improve my spelling, this too is being honored!! grin. Also I beleive I made mention of my documentation not being so hot, well that holds true also, hehe. With File Magician expanding to such a huge extent it would be very time consuming to continuely rewrite the documention from start to finish each time its updated so what I've done again is to add inserts and notes from past documentation from the newest to the oldest. I've taken great pains to make File Magician easy to use and understand without the aid of docs and most people find this possible. FOR THOSE THAT DON'T KNOW ABOUT "FILE MAGICIAN"! (gasp) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ File Magician has now evolved past just another file manager or winzip type program. Its basically a home base program that you can configure to suit nearly your every need. It offers more abilities to handle archive files like .zip, .lzh, .arg, then any other program for the PC. Its File Management system is beyond anything that exists commerical or shareware that I have seen for windows or dos. Its speed and low memory usage is great for a program of its size. Probably the most important feature of File Magician is the fact that it has a programmer that is entirely devoted to making FM the greatest management tool that exists for the PC and will Continue to do so!! I think I have proven that just in the last year. Also I'm not a newcomer into the programming field as many shareware programmers are. I've had a acute addictive habit for programming in 'C' for the last 10 years!! grin. The best way to describe File Magician is for you to simply load the program. If I tried to describe it All this archive would be a bit large to download! GOLD NUGGETS? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hopefully the description for this Archive mentioned something about FREE GOLD NUGGETS! Yes this is true!! All registered owners of FM will get 1 Free Gold Nugget while the supply lasts. This is a REAL 24K Gold Nuggent that I have personally found! "While supply lasts" sounds really bad and kinda scammy, but its something that had to be stated. I do have a large supply of Gold Nuggets and WILL be able to supply a large number of people that are the first to register File Magician. When the supply runs out I will offer a raincheck. For those that don't know what a raincheck is, it is a promise to fullfill a item when that item becomes available. Everything will be on a first come first serve basis. Expiration of this offer ends Nov 29, 1994! Please check out the file "Gold.txt" for additional information. The principle behind giving away free Gold Nuggets with this shareware product is for marketing, plain, simple, and honest! The trust mail feature we offered before was a extreme hit, BUT only a small percentage of people actually paid and it just wasn't cost effective. Secondly I do believe that this is the first time in all computer history that any Shareware or Commerical product has offered real Gold for buying their products. Anyhow this offer is for real and there is no BS about it. TRUST MAIL? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As stated above this feature is no longer in effect. Its too bad it didn't work out and everyone did like it but it still comes down to dollars and cents. With every update and registration we pay the postage plus the cost of putting the package together, which all adds up quickly, so it doesn't take a lot of non-payers to operate in the red. COST ~~~~~~ File Magician is still $40.00 US Funds by either personal check or money order. Sorry but we do not accept Credit Cards and probably won't in the future for a number of reasons that I won't go into. Located at the bottom of this file is the place to send for File Magician as is in the About menu. Future first time registrations for File Magician V4.0 could very well be in the $70.00 range. This is high for shareware I know but FM is easily commerical material and the old saying goes, "You get what you Pay For!". It will be more cost efficent for you to register 3.5 now and buy the 4.0 upgrade when its released. Heck I'll put this in again: Terry Bullard Bullard Software 3291 Mt. View Rd. Ferndale, Wa. 98248 206-384-6740 (voice) between 5:00pm and 9:00pm W.S.T. 206-384-2591 (BBS) 24 hours - 14.4 USR (not compatibles connect=2400) PARTIAL PAYMENTS? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This was axcepted in previous versions of File Magician but cannot be any longer. Payment must be made in full before FM is shipped. FMV3.5 UPDATE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (upgrade insert) First I want to thank all of those that Registered File Magician. Its people like you that help make the continuation of shareware possible! Still one of the biggest problems with marketing shareware is exposure. Reviews are extremely helpful but very difficult to achive unless there is a lot of public input to the different magazines and bulletin boards. Shareware is also real slow in moving from BBS to BBS, we are still getting calls on Version 1 of FM which is over nine months old. We do need more and quicker exposure to obtain registrations to guarentee the continuation of FM. There is so much more that can be packed into this program! I have hopes that you will be able to upload the evaluation version of FM, listed in the root directory of your disk, to all your local BBS boards and a additional hope would be to call or write the different magazines that you read and tell them about FM. All this would help us beyond measure!! We do have a few new policy changes concerning File Magician, first the trust mail did not work out and we are no longer honoring that benefit. Less then 20 percent actually paid for the program and that is by no means cost effective, but it was still something that would have been wonderful if it had succeeded! As a new marketing tactic we are offering a Real Gold Nugget for each new registration (while they last). Even though you have already registered, you will also receive one in this update, after all you have supported me from the beginning and I haven't forgot you!! See the info sheet concerning the Gold Nugget (if you haven't already) for additional info. Concerning updates from this point forward will not be free. The cost of a new update will vary depending upon the update. The cost will be keep as low as possible and addtional registrations will drive the cost even lower. The cost will be based on mailing and handling fees, and programming time which decreases according to the amount of registered users. You will be notified in advance by mail of the cost and new enhancements of FM to base your decision on upgrading. If you have been following course of FM updates you will have noticed the huge additions and improvements with each version. With FMV3.5, the same holds true. Version 3.0 of FM had a .exe size of approx. 250K, Version 3.5 .exe size is +380K along with supporting .DLLs. 575,687 bytes (characters) have been added to the new V3.5 update alone, in additional source coding for the project. Large additions and changes have been made to V3.5, many from suggestions of FM users and a few of my own. These will be listed below, describing the operation of each. Once Again, Thank you!!! Whats New? ~~~~~~~~~~~ 3D Look.... FM now contains a new 3D look throughout entire program. Ghost Bug... Finally I have located the false file listing that appears on when a blank drive is selected or all the files have been deleted from. I do have to state that the bug was not mine but a bug of the compiler. Because of this compiler problem it was near impossible to track down, but at last it was found and I was able to make support corrections to the problem. Auto Configuration.... With previous versions of FM you had to reconfigure a update. Now FM will attempt to reconstruct your previous configuration and reconfigure it to the new version. New 3.5 configurations will be supplied as a default. I'm sure this is a relief to all of you! Configuration Checker.... All problems that people have had with FM seem to stem to be their placement of important files (like Pkzip etc.) that FM uses and how windows acts with the path environment. Documentation for Windows and Windows programming manuals do not seem to be correct concerning environmental paths. Also many times the actually PATH strings used in the startup files are incorrect. So I've built into FM a Configuration Checker, labeled under the Utilities menu "Check Configuration". This function will reach into memory so to speak and find out what is really there and compare it with what you have currently configured and display a list of reports for each item. Keep in mind this isn't 100% accurate but it sure will help. Another thing all programs that FM uses for the Archive Commander should be either in your 'Dos' or 'Windows' directory for the best results. CMD Loader..... This function has been completely replaced with one that is much much simpler to run. I think there was perhaps a overkill in the previous function and this new one did elimate 14K of .exe coding. There are still 20 CMDs, 10 main screen buttons and 10 Menu Items. The CMD Loader Panel consists basically of two colunms, one for the buttons and one for the menus. To load a CMD, first click on the round button to indicate which CMD you wish to load or change. Next Click on the corisponding "Load x" button, this will load a windows file locater. Run through the tree of the file panel until you find the program.exe that you want to be a CMD, then click OK. The full path name of the CMD will auto- matically be loaded into the 'CMD Pathname' Box. You must then fill in a new name for the button or menu item of the CMD in the 'CMD Name' box. Now if you want the CMD to interact with a selected file listing you would next click on the "Add List Symbol". This action will place a %s at the end of the CMD Pathname string. Then when the CMD is activated, the selected file listing will be substituted for the %s. The "Delete This CMD" Button will clear any CMD that IS selected and classify that slot as "Empty". The "Save This CMD" will save all the current CMD selections to disk. This function need not be used for each indiviual CMD change but can be used all changes made during the session. The "Exit CMD Config" button only will keep all the CMD changes for just the current FM session. Once FM is terminated, the CMD changes will not be restored. Only "Save This CMD" will save the configuration to disk. I do hope this method is easier and faster for all of you. Help.... I've added Help buttons to nearly every FM function encluding buttons. This is NOT the standard Windows help program that nearly everyone uses. The main reason for this memory usage. Winhelp.exe is a 256K+ program, plus the associated .hlp file is loaded into memory to display any help that might be required. It is possible that Winhelp was programed with overlays but still that has a huge chunck of memory to use and there is the difficulty of new users to add comments to a windows help file. FM's help uses a tad less then 10K and it works with a standard text file that any editor can edit. This means that you can easily add to any help subject that FM has to offer as long as you follow a few basic FM rules. The Help topic is case sensitive and must start in column 1, any text lines following a help topic must start in column 2 or greater, line length should be limited to 79 characters, and finally the body of text under and including the Help Header must not exceed 8100 characters, which is a lot! The filename for FMs help is FM.hlp and you can edit it from File Magician if you wish under the Utilities Menu "Edit Help". FM will automatically find the correct file and invoke the editor to load it. The Editor that will be used MUST be specified within the "Configuration Panel" under the Names section. When help is requested, FM will search FM.HLP for the matching Help Header and display it within a scrollable dialog box. If the header isn't found then FM will issue a error notice with the proper name of the Help Header. Help for the main screen buttons is located under the "Help" menu. Panel Buttons..... The Biggie! This has been the most requested item. More configurable buttons. Well you got them! Three panels of them, each panel consisting of 28 buttons for a grand total or 84 additional buttons. Each button in itself is a CMD, and the same rules apply to configuring the panel buttons as the CMD Loader. To get to the configuration area for the panels you must enter the configuration screen and then click on the button marked Panelx, x being the panel number. To invoke a panel you can either use the menu items under "Panels" or you can configure your mouse buttons (described below). Each panel multitasks with FM, which means that you are free use the main screen of FM while a button panel is present and you may interface selected listing from the main screen of FM with the any of the Button Panels. When a panel is first booted it will center itself, moving if neccessary depending upon your resolution, to cover the FM's main screen buttons. You may move the panel anywhere from that point if you wish to get to FM's main buttons. Drive Button Configurations.... Now you can configure the 12 drive buttons to any device you wish and in any order. From the Configuration Screen click on the "Dr Conf" button this will invoke the "Drive Button Configuration" Panel. At the top of the panel are 12 buttons just like the main screen of FM. These 12 buttons are for show only and are only there to show you how your main button display wil work. To change a drive you must not only change the drive letter but the drive number as well. This is important for FM to keep track of its own location. Drive numbers corispond with the letters A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. After you change the drive, Change the number in the next column!! When you have completed this configuration you can select the "Save" button to write the changes to disk. FM will immediately update the main screen to show your changes. Gauges.... FM now has 3 fuel gauges on its main screen. The yellow ones next to each view window show how full that drive is and the gauage at the bottom shows remaining resources in the system. When using FM to execute other programs it will pay to note the resources left before execution and resources left after execution. Many programs get very sloppy and DO NOT free up any or all resources used while running. Properly freeing up resources with program termination is almost traditional with beginning programmers or at least a over assumpsion of freeing resources due to the large amount of different compiler available now. Currently the gauges will update themselves when some type of action is performed on the main screen, but will at a later date be under timer control. Currently its unwise to use timer control until I see how many controls I have left. Mouse Button Configuration..... The middle and right mouse buttons can now be programmed to do 4 different tasks. The first task is "parent" which will cause a parent action to happen on the active view window. Same as hitting the parent button. The next three options invoke one of the three button panels. To Configure the mouse you must select the "Mouse" button in the "Configuration Screen". There is two column of radio buttons listing 5 possible selections. The fifth selection "Menu Panel" is reserved for the next update of FM, but the first 4 are active. You may only choose 1 selection for each button. Selecting "Save" will save the configuration to disk and you may immediately begin using that function. Macro Keys.... There are 12 keys that can be programmed as macros, F1-F12. The Macro Keys are configured from the "Macros" button located in the "Configuration screen. Here you are presented with 3 scroll boxes, "Macro Key", "FM Commands", and "Key List". The "Key List" box is for display purposes only, it shows you which key is assigned to which command. To Configure a macro you must first select a Key from the "Macro Key" box, then you have a choice of assigning it a FM Command or using one of your own. A FM Command is one of the enternal functions that FM has such as "Copy", "Delete", etc. If you wish to use a FM Command click next on a command within the "FM Commands" box and that will appear in the edit box "Command". If you wish to have the macro act as a CMD then instead of using a FM Command enter in your own command within the "Command" edit box. Next select the "Accept" Button, this will assign that command to that macro key and will also display it in the "Key List" box as being assigned. After you have Made your selections click the "Save" button and the configuration will be saved to disk. Located under the "Help" menu is a menuitem called "Macros", this displays a list of all the Fx Keys and what they have assigned to them. This is for a reminder display only. The macros will not execute from that menu. Additional keys and macro menu execution will be available in future versions of FM. File/Text Finder.... This function will find either files or text strings within files. You may activate this feature by using the menus or as a macro key. Here you have several options. You may search text files only, binary files only, or both. You may do either a text search or a file search. You may search only the files and directories that you have previously selected or you may search the entire contents of any drive. When first entering into the function it will automatically default everytime to "Both" - "File Search" - "Use Selected". If this is what you want to do then just enter in the name of the file you wish to search for and click "Search". The Finder will also accept the wild care '*' for a search pattern. te*.* will match all files that start with te and any extentsion. The asterix is the stopping point of the filename and cannot be used to substitute as a letter, so 'te*t.* would not work. If wild cards are used you must supply a extendsion as well such as te*.e* or te*.exe. A Text search will not use wild cards but will scan specified files for any string that matches what you have entered. Keep in mind that the shorter the string you use for a text search the faster the search will take place. I have wrote commerical programs that extensively search for strings in all sorts of files and Media including disk MFM formats and the search routines are fast and accurate but still the governing facter is the lenght of the string to find. After you have made a successful search and you may have found many matches you might want to save the contents of your search to a file for later use, this is what the "Save To File" button is for. When activated it will present you with a "Save As" Panel where you can create or select a file to send the report to. User Notes.... This feature allows you to store any notes that you might wish to make concerning anything and works under the exact same principle as the Help feature does. You are allowed up to 15 Note Listings and each listing must have a Note Header just as the help file does. To configure a note you must enter the "Configuration Screen" and choose the "Notes" button. When activated you will be presented with a panel that contains two columns of edit boxes, "Menu Name", and "Search Header". The menu name column will contain the name of the note topic that will be displayed in the notes menu and the Search Header colunm Contains the name of the topic that you wish to use in the notes file. This Header must be 1 word and must start in colunm 1 and all the rest of the body lines must start in column 2 or larger. The text size cannot be greater then 8100 characters and will appear the exact same way the help screens appear. You may also within the configuration panel edit the note file by clicking on the "Edit Notes" button. You may also edit the notes file from the "Utilities Menu" under "Edit Notes". To view a note you would use the menuitem "Notes" then slide to the topic you wish to view. Disk Menu.... The menuitems under the menu "Disk" are not for this version of FM. I had thought about removing them but decided to leave them to give you a little insight of what is to come in future updates. Of course this will not be all, I actually have a ton planned but it does take a little and I'm more the sure you are getting impatient for this release! Print Button.... Future versions of FM will have much expanded features of printing files. For now I have created a spooler that will take all selected files either in the main FM screen or the Archive Commander and send them to the printer manager where FM will instruct printer manager to begin to print the files. After doing this FM will disconnect itself and allow the print manager to do its thing while you get on to something else. The Archive Commander!!!.... This is one of the more important features of FM that people use the most and I have spent more time reconstructing this feature with a new look and many additional features. I do believe that there is NO OTHER archive handler in existence that will do as much as with a archive as what the Archive Commander can do. At least in my search for competing software either commerical or shareware, I have not run across anything put together that compares. The following is a brief description on the Commanders features. The Commander will automatically detect the type of archive file that has been loaded into the Commander with the exception of self extracting archives. These must be loaded manually and only a few features will apply to a self extraction archive, such as converting to a different archive format. (this is temporary) The Archive Commander now supports not only .zip files but .lzh and .arj as well. The Commander also has a built in comment editor that can be used for viewing previously saved archive comments and many other things described below. Upper right Scroll Box - Contains the files that are within a archive that has been processed. Middle Scroll Box - Contains all archive files that were selected before the Commander was activated. Process Button - Will process the selected archive and display the files it holds in the right file box and if a comment is embedded within the archive, that comment will be displayed in the editor. Extract Button - This button will extract all files that you have selected to one or all 3 locations in a single pass. You will be presented with a panel that will contain 2 check boxes, one for the right view window and one for the left view window. A third check box is available to send the files to any path that you describe in the ajoining edit box. 1, 2, or all 3 maybe checked if you wish. Delete Button - This will delete from the archive any files that you have selected for deletion. Run Button - This will execute any file within a archive, but keep in mind that if this file needs to have supporting .dlls it probably will not run. It would be best to decompress to a temp directory and execute it there. Test Button - Test for corruptness of the archive and gives you the report that was issued by the archiver. All Button - Will select all the files in Archived Files Box. Clear Button - De-selectes all files in the Archives Files Box. Help Button - Brings up the help screen as described above. Quit Button - Exits out of the Commander. Clr Comment Button - Erases and resets the comment editor. Load Comment Button - This neat little feature will allow you to load a pre-existing file into the comment editor where it can be resaved back to the archive as a new comment. Load Last Button - The Commander keeps a 1 comment history which means that if you process another file you can recall the last comment from the previous file and reload it into the editor. Save Comment Button - Here you may save any comment to a file of your choice. Of course the comment must be in the editor at the time. Insert Comment Button - This will add the comment to the selected archive and save it. Print Comment Button - This will send the current comment out to the printer. Show Comment Button - You may wish to re-establish the orginal comment that came with the archive if you haven't changed and saved a new comment. This forces a re-read of the archive comment area. Convert 2 Zip Button - This will convert a .lzh or .arj to a .zip file Convert 2 Lha Button - This will convert a .zip or .arj to a .lzh file Convert 2 Arj Button - This will convert a .zip or .lzh to a .arj file Add Description Button - This feature will take whatever is in the editor box and ask you for a filename. Once this is given, the Commander will create a file with the contents of the editor and place it within the archive. Add Files Button - This feature will add any selected files from and drive or directory to the selected archive with one pass. The feature is simple to use but a bit tricky to understand. Upon entering this feature it is best to first click the 'Del List' button. This clears any forgotten listings that might be left there. The idea behind this is to create a path list of files that might reside in different directories or on different drives from where the archive is. After this path list has been created then the archiver can be called to pack everything within the path list to the selected archive. So the proper proceedure is first to Delete the list. Then run through the tree and select the files you wish to have added to the archive. After selecting the file and before changing to a different path click the "Add2List" button, this writes your current selection. Then change paths and and repeat the process if more files are desired. After all your selections have been made and the Add2List button has been pressed for each set of files Click on the "Do It" button. This will active the archiver and the deed is done. You might want to get into the practice of deleting the list before canceling out of the function. In the Files column the directory selection is at the bottom of the list, they may be double clicked to enter that directory just as double clicking the drive letters will give you the root directory of that drive. Make Lha Button - Same as below Make Arj Button - Same as below Make Zip Button - This button will take all the selected files from a processed selected archive and create a new archive with a different name and contain only the file(s) that were selected. Make .EXE Button - This function will take the selected archive and make it into a self extracting archive. With .zip files you must be sure to have the zip2exe program located within your dos or windows directory and have its name in the Names area of the configuration screen. Arj and Lha handles this feature quite well and does so internally. Repair Zip Button - With this feature you must have the pkzipfix program and have it within your dos or windows directory. Also it must be named with in the Names area of the Configuration Screen. This feature works only for .zip files. Print File Button - The Print File function is basically the same as the main screens print button. It will take all of the selected files from a processed archive and spool them out to the print manager. Read File Button - Read File will invoke the reader to read the file that you have selected within the archive. You may also do the same with double clicking. Double Clicking... The File Commander double click features work the same as FMs double click feature. It does NOT work by reconizing extendsions but by reconizing the files personal binary header. I've had a couple of requests for FM to reconize the text extendsions of files but I still maintain the belief that this is a most crippling aspect of programming concepts and does nothing but have the potential of misleading software and the spreading of computer viruses. It is a standard that should have been dropped years ago!! But I will still keep a open mind to all things. Installation... As of this writing I have not created a installation program yet for FM but hope to before the sending date. If not there will be instructions on how to do so, which isn't too hard, a simple matter of coping files but I'll try like the dickens to make it easy for everyone. FView... Included on this disk is a archive called Fview12.zip. This is a file reader/viewer that I use with FM. Its the best reader that I have found to date and I do have permission from the author to distribute it with the FM3.5 update. Fview is evaluation shareware software that doesn't have the typical nag screens and handles large files very quickly. And I haven't found any bugs in the program. The price of FM does not cover the shareware cost of Fview! If you wish to use it, you must register it. All the information is within the archive and it is the latest version. I received it directly from the author via modem on Nov. 19. This program after its been de-archived should be placed in your dos or windows directory and its name FView be place in the read box in the names column of the Configuration Screen. Conclusion: That is about all of the visible stuff for this update. As far as internal things go, FM has been basically completely re-organized, mainly because of its large program size and much coding has been rewrote to provide tighter and faster execution plus run under low memory environments. Also I still do not see a end to the amount of things that FM can do in future releases. But still everything depends upon future registrations so any help you can give in talking with other people, posting on Bulletin Boards, writing or phoning magazines will be of great importance of making File Magician a great success! Thanks for your Support!!! Sincerely Terry Bullard. THINGS TO COME? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You bet! Not only just the Disk Menu Stuff and the Menu Panel but tons more to say the least. One thing that will be a definite add in, will be for our overseas supporters, which are increasing in number from nearly all nations. FM will be able, by configuration, to support all language texts. Provided of course it there is a translation made for that language. There is so many ideas that I have to add and I'm sure as always I'll get a ton more from lots of people everywhere. I know you'll be amazed! File Magician V3.0 Copyright 1993-1994 by Terry Bullard for Windows 3.1 Release Date: Apr. 3, 1993 TOPICS in ORDER ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introduction A Couple of Questions Ordering Hours Calls of Thanks Can I Improve my HD Performance? Upgrades Site Licenses What you can do for us Whats New in V3 Palette Control CMD/Task Loader The Exchange Font Selecter DlClk Task Control Auto File Listing on Bootup File Copy Modes Double Clicked .zip Files Last Minute Stuff Add2List for Archiving Dos Button Ent Com Move Drive Selections Multiple Mouse Selections Menu Save Configuration Use Desktop Palette Use System Desktop Palette Clock New Stuff to Come Installation With PCTools With Program Manager With Norton Desktop Some of the Old Stuff Description Just What is File Magician Requirements How To Register Trust Mail What You Get First and MOST important before running File Magician! Next Important thing CMDs or Tasks Archive compressers (Pkzip, lha, arj) Archive Commander Double clicking Path Bars Split Duplicate Menus Compression Utilities View Windows Selection Title Bar Keyboard Push Buttons Drive Buttons Parent All Clear Copy Rename Move Delete Read Byte Request MakeDir Run INTRODUCTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Welcome to File Magician version 3.0! For those of you unfamiliar with File Magician Please read the setup section for FM carefully, pay particular attention to the steps in changing the _default.pif file. For those of you familiar with FM will find huge differences from version 2.0. First and most important FM does not gobble resources as it did in v2.0. I have a hard time labeling this as a FM bug when in reality it is a compiler problem. This sounds like passing the buck but it really isn't! Anyway I found a way to work around it and now the resources behave properly. FM has added 123K to the .EXE coding and to keep FM as independent as possible I had to change a few things to keep it within the hardware limits for a basic 4 meg setup. The F1 help has been removed to make room for additional error control coding, this was all pretty basic stuff and is covered quite well in the documentation. If this is unsatisfactory to everyone I'll bring in winhelp (gasp). The other behind the scenes thing with FM is the directory and file limitation. FM will handle up to 100 directories and 300 files per root listing instead of the 50 and 200 as before. This was an oversite on my part and I just don't have a good excuse! The next release of FM will have unlimited file and directory listings. I plan to bring in a Amiga method of virtual memory control to handle it. This will take 80 to 100 hours of time to make the conversion so it will have to be in the next release. File Magician has been tested with 'Norton Desktop', 'PCTools', and 'Dash Board', without encountering any problems. Also FM does does quite a good job of running all of their fine utility programs too, so one might keep in mind that one could benfit by their programs and still remain under MS's program manager. Oh yes almost forgot, FM was tested with the Program Managers too. A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are a couple of questions and reasons to clear up before proceeding with what is new in V3.0 Calling Hours. As stated before they are 4:00pm to 9:00pm Pacific Standard Time. You may call during the day if you wish but you may very easily get one of those nasty answering machines. If you do, please leave your name and phone number and I WILL call you back. As soon as I get enough registrations I WILL put in a toll free number and WILL be here during the day. 3.5 Note: At times it might be very difficult to call everyone back but please make good use of the bbs number listed on the About panel of the program. I've found that is far simpler to describe a problem and reply to a problem with a solution by EMail. (206)-384-2591 BBS NOTE: When leaving a message on the answering machine, please speak slowly when leaving your name and number. Its either me or the machine that doesn't hear so well <grin> Several people who have called have thanked me for being here for them. This surprised me a bit. In my opinion if a programmer releases software to the public he or she SHOULD be there for the people who use or want to use their software! If not then they had better find a new line of work!! I AM here for everyone and WILL continue to upgrade FM to the best of my ability, and your calls help me acheive those goals. How can I improve my Hard Drive Performance? This question has been asked me many times. Optimizers are good but you must keep your hard drive organized. Do NOT have a lot of files and directories in a single root directory. Create new embedded directories and store your files in a organized manner. Anything more then 200 listings in a root directory slows hd performance and a great number of other things. Plus a good guess is that your hard drive will need to be replaced sooner. Site Licenses. Yes we do have Site Fees. These are NOT Site copy fees but reduced fees based upon the number of copys ordered from us. You will need to call for pricing. Keep in mind that I'm from a small hick town in Washington state and I'm a good generation older then 90 percent of the current shareware programmers. So it is safe to assume that my beliefs and business practices are a bit old fashion especially in regards to where the customer comes first! But as to new ideas and mechanical programming, those young whippersnappers had better sit back and watch how its done! <grin> WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR US ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One final thing and we'll get to whats new. Please upload this evaluation copy of FM to all the Bulletin Boards you call. Fast distribution is always a problem. Then if you like FM please call or write your favorite computer magazine. All of the above would help me and you! For me, it gets FM known. For you, it allows me to devote more time to FM's continued development! Now if you don't like FM, call me and tell me why, this will help me make FM even better! File Magician WILL be if its NOT ALREADY the best file managing and archive managing program for the PC. With your help it will be and remain to be Number One! (Documentation might be another story!) EEK! ******** Below is a insert from Version 3.0 of File Magician. With a few slight changes made in version 3.5 ******** OK On to What's New........ Palette Control ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Palette control is located under the utilities menu. The palette control consists of 48 different items which enables you to change the current color.The first 21 are the standard Project Manager controls and the last 27 are independent items for FM. This will give you almost complete control over FM's color selections, you can change it to what is pleasant to your eye. The function 'The Exchange' explained below will allow you to save your palette as an independant file or load up someone elses palette. After loading the palette selector you will be presented with a dialog box containing the different controls you can use to make the necessary changes. The upper left quarter of the box are three slide gadgets that will allow you to adjust the different color shades. The upper right quarter of the box contains a list box of all the different items you can change. The bottom third of the dialog box contains six push button controls and a comment field. OK Button - This button accepts the color selection you have chosen for any particular item. Once you are satisfied with an items color, press this button. Ok must be pressed for each item you change if your satisifed with the color. SAVE Button - The save button only needs to be pressed once when you have finished with all your selections. Save will save the entire palette configuration to disk. TEST Button - This button will change the color of the current item you are working to see how it actually looks. For me and I'm sure everyone else it is difficult to see how something will look like without actually seeing it visually. After choosing 'Test' you must either choose 'OK' or 'Stop Test'. STOP TEST - Stop Test will stop the testing mode of the palette selecter and reset the selected item back to the orginial color plus reset the color selector gadgets back to what they were orginally. There were pros and cons in reseting the color selector gadgets back to where they were orginally or just leaving them at the last current state of selection. Returning back to the default won out for the simple reason that it was too hard to remember exactly where default really was and it was best to just start out with a new selection. It worked for me, I hope it works for you. DEFAULT - This button will reset any selected item back to my orginal color selection for FM. The Color basis is from the stock settings of Windows. CANCEL - Cancel is the Same as Exit. Cancel means to cancel any further palette Selections. Perhaps it should have just been called Exit. COMMENT - This comment field can contain up to 80 characters. The reason for this comment section is so you can label your different palette creations with your name or any comments you might have concerning that palette. Also when using "The Exchange" to load other peoples palettes you can see who and what they have to say concerning that palette. See the 'The Exchange' section below for further info. Proceedure: - The best way to use the palette selector is to first select a item from the list box in the upper right corner than adjust the color control bars. When you find something that might look neat, push the 'Test' button. If it looks suitable then go ahead and select ok. Then proceed onto the next item. Now if you are totally satisfied with your selections you may select either 'SAVE' or 'CANCEL'. Selecting 'SAVE' will write the configuration to disk. Selecting 'CANCEL' will allow you to use the palette settings only for the current secession. PALETTE BACK - This menu item will read your disk configuration and load the palette you last saved to disk. This comes in handy if you decide your palette choices weren't all that neat after all. CMD LOADER ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This has been change around completely, see the above section for 3.5 THE EXCHANGE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Exchange is a feature that will allow you to load or save different parts of your configuration of FM. If you have come up with a really neat palette selection for FM and you want to share it with others on a bulletin board, computer club, or just friends you can save the palette as a seperate file and upload it or pass it out on disk. Or if you wish to view someone elses idea for a palette you can load theirs and keep it or modify it as you wish. The exchange also supports configuration segments for Pkzip, Pkunzip, Lha, and Arj. For most people including myself it is somewhat confusing to understand just what setting does what etc. without going into great study. Well some people have a real nak for it and with any luck these talented people will allow others to observe their talents in creating settings files for other people to use. The Palette and all the Archive settings dialog boxes have a 'Comment' box which can be used for notations or signatures of who created it. To use The Exchange use the following steps. Step 1: To load or save a file you can first click on a file before loading The Exchange. After the file is highlighted you would use the menu to start The Exchange. When the exchange appears the file you selected will show up in the 'Selected File' box. If you wish to use that filename select the 'Use Selected' button. I know this is more then one step but... Step 2: If you do not use the 'Use Selected' step enter in the 'Filename' box the name and path of the file you wish to load or save. Step 3: Select one of the configuration buttons, 'Palette','Pkzip' etc. Step 4: Click either load or save depending on what you are doing. Thats it.! The new configuration will take effect immediately. If you wish to retain these settings you must load up the configuration screen and chose 'Save' to save to disk. FONT SELECTER ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Font Selecter will allow you to use two different fonts in the main view of FM. The first menu item is 'View Windows'. 'View Windows' are the fonts that display the files and directories located in the right and left view windows. Any type or size of font may be used. FM will adjust accordingly. Of course if you pick too large of a font the file name and file size will interweave making for a very difficult display to read, hehe. Keep in mind when a different font other then the system font is used, the display when repainting is noticably slower. At least it is on my low end clone. It would be interesting to see how it reacts on a good machine. Underline and Strikeout are allowed as well as the different point size but color is not, even though it is indicated. The font color can be set with the palette control. I have a rather limited supply of fonts to test but everything I do has seemed to work well. My favorite selection is having "small.fon" with point size 6 as the buttons and "Terminal.fon" 9 as view. The 'Background Fonts' menu item is set for the button controls of the main view screen. Once you are happy with your font selection, choose 'Save Font's' from the menu. This will save to disk the font structure and when you boot up FM next time your fonts will be displayed. Also depending upon your machine keep in mind it takes a bit to load the fonts from disk when first booting. DLCLK TASK CONTROL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here is the real work horse of File Magician! DlClk Task Control is ONLY similar to Windows File Manager in one way. You can double click a file and the appropriate program is loaded to run the associated double clicked file. Most programs use the file extension method to associate a given file to a given program. FM DOES NOT! Too many different types of files have the same bloody extension and there is nothing more aggrevating then getting an unrecognized winhelp file or you have to make an extension association with every bloody .txt, .doc, .c, .h, etc etc. The only true way, is to recognize the files binary header which 99 percent of them have that identifies what type of file they really are. Well this is what FM does. Ok, now I was presented with a couple of different choices on how to do this. The first and most obvious was to examine every file I could get my hands on and construct FM to recognize that header and do its thing provided you had the correct manager to run that file. Well I sure couldn't afford to cover the hundreds or, better yet thousands of filetypes available to the PC and I had to have some way to satisfy everyone. So, one of the two days I took off since starting FM,( it came to me while panning gold in one of Canada's beautiful rivers), why not give FM the ability to learn the different filetypes and store them away for use. That day was a nice one and I did find more gold then usual but I cut it short and headed home to add the feature to FM. It wasn't an easy task in making it easy to use for everyone at all levels, but I think it came out fairly well as long as the users take the proper steps in setting it up. A double click function must have a task to work on the double clicked file. For instance if you wish to view a .gif picture file you would use one of the many great gif viewers that are available. So you would do the same when setting up a double click configuration. From now on I'll refer to the Task (gif viewer) as a Manager. So the first thing to do is figure out what type of file we wish to have as a double click control. We'll use the .gif as an example and the name of manager can be GifView.exe. Now the first thing that has to be done is to load the Manager. The best way to do this is to use the search functions. So step by step Step 1: Load the Task Dispatcher from the menu. Step 2: Select the drive to search from in the drive box. Step 3: Enter in the full Manager's name or first few letters of the Manager's name in the entry box labeled 'Search Name or .ext' If you are unsure of the filename enter .EXE to search for all executibles. Step 4: At the end of the search, select the listing you believe is the correct manager for the task you wish to do. Step 5: Select the Manager Button. The name of the manager will appear in the entry box labeled 'Manager name'. Now it is time to teach FM what type of files that manager should work on. Step 6: On the bottom of the dialog box are four radio buttons labeled 'Match' and then a number 1-4. NOTE: Match is the number of bytes FM will compare when learning about the different filetypes. Selecting Match 3 (default) is quite accurate but some files like .bmp, .pif have only 1 or 2 beggining header bytes that are the same. So if at first you don't match 3 or 4, try a lower number. FM will tell you what your odds are. The next step is to locate a number of files that contain the same .ext as the manager should work on. Keep in mind that many files have the same extension so you may very well have to adjust the extension file selection. Ok now use the search feature again. Step 7: Enter in the 'Search Name' box the name of the extension you wish to use like .gif Step 8: Choose the drive you wish to search, if it is different then the one you used to search for the manager. Step 9: Push the Search button. Step 10: After your search ends you may select all the entries in the search box by pushing the 'Select All' or you can select any number of entries manually with the mouse. Step 11: Push the 'Learn' Button. NOTE: FM will scan all of the selected files and compare them with the first entry in list. If no matches are found you will be told to deselect the first entry and try again. Hopefully your won't have to do this too much before FM Finds a successful match. If the first entry only matchs a few of the files FM will give you the percentage of matches and deselect all of the files that didn't match. At that point you take over and decide if you wish to accept this selection. If so then use Step 12 Step 12: Push the 'Accept' Button. Thats it. See, piece of cake! Now you can double click any .gif file in either view window and FM will call GifView.exe to load and show the selected .gif file. Hm... almost makes drag and drop obsolete huh.. The three buttons "Clear Sel", "Select All", "Clear Box", are pretty basic. Clear Sel - Clears all the selected listings in the search list box. Select All - Selects all the listings in the search box. Clear Box - Deletes all the listings in the search box and resets the box to zero. The two buttons "Task List", and "Del Entry" are for viewing and deleting previously accepted Matches. To view the list of matches, press the 'Task List' button. To delete a match, select a match from the search list box and then press the 'Del Entry' Button. The last button that hasn't been described yet is the 'Load List' Button. This button loads a previously selected list of files that were selected on the Main screen of File Magician. The Main screen of FM has two collective buttons, 'Add2List' and 'Del List'. Currently these buttons are dedicated to the DlClk Task Controller in selecting files for FM to learn from. Later these same buttons will be used to Archive files from different directories and different drives all in one shot. In using the buttons with DlClk Task Controller you would first Clear the list by pressing 'Del List'. Then you can roam around your HD and select different files with the proper extension you want FM to learn about. After you select these files, push the button 'Add2List', then move on to the next directory or drive, select more files, 'Add2List', etc. Once you have selected all the files you want to select you can then load the DlClk Task Dispatcher. You then enter in the Manager's name and next you select the 'Load List' button. This button will load all the files you have previously selected with the 'Add2List' button. Then you can continue on with the learn process. Have no fear with this function, the worst that can really happens is the manager program you selected won't work and the FM will just ignore your double click message. If FM does ignore it then you have either the wrong manager or the manager tries to load the wrong files. Currently File Magician recognizes the following files. .EXE, .ZIP, .LHA, .ARJ and All text files. Double Click editing should be avoided for these filetype because FM will over ride the configuration. Text Files should be explained a little here. FM is accompanied with a seperate file called read.exe. This is a very simple text file reader that only took a few hours to program. When FM encounters a double clicked text file it will load the reader to read the file. Currently my efforts have been to add to File Magician's abilities and as of yet I have not had enough waking hours to enhance the reader problem and for this reason I have added a slot within the configuration window where the reader program can be subsituted for some other reader or editor of your choice. Qedit works very well for large files and notepad is quite good for files under 32k. To accomplish this, open the config window by pushing the "Config" button and in the group box labeled Names, replace the Read name with the filename of your choice. The filename must either be in the same directory as FM or it must reside within the Path Environment. Auto File Listing on bootup ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ File Magician can now be set to have either view window contain a pre-defined file and directory listing. To accomplish this, enter the configuration control and in the group box that is labeled "Paths" you will see .. Left Boot Drive _________ _____ | | | | |_________| |_____| Right Boot Drive _________ _____ | | | | |_________| |_____| Left Boot of course is for the Left view window and Right Boot is for the right view windows. Enter in the drive and or directory you wish File Magician to load when you first load File Magician. The drives and or directories should be entered in as the following example. C: C:\windows etc. The drive box contains the actual number of the drive. Only a number can be entered here and it must relate to the drive that is indicated in boot box. Failure to enter the correct drive number could result in some unexpected results. The values are as follows A: = 1 B: = 2 C: = 3 D: = 4 E: = 5 etc. FILE COPY MODES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The copy command button has been changed. You now have available three different copy methods when copying file or directories. 1) Copy Standard 2) Compress while Copying 3) Decompress while Copying Copy Standard - This is the standard copy procedure used in the previous versions of FM. All selected files are sent to the destination area and the originals are left untouched. Compress While Copying - This method will copy files to the destination area and compress each file in route to the destination area. This method uses MicroSoft's compression routines. The filenames are left unchanged and the command will maintain the directory tree if any directory has been selected. I've recorded up to a 74 percent compression ratio in some tests. The great advantage to this function is there is always a visual reference of the compressed files and the need to remember or view a zip file for its contents is not needed. The downside of this function is it will pad extra bytes to a file when compressing a file that has already been compressed by some other archiver. These padded are stripped when the file is recopied using the Decompress While copying mode. FM is in no way trying to compete with any other existing archiver but simply giving you another file compression advantage. All files are sent to the destination area and the orginals are left untouched. Decompress While Copying - This mode will decompress any file that has been previously compressed with File Magician. If multiple files have been selected and only some have been previously compressed, FM will decompresss only those files that are compressed and standard copy the files that are not compressed. There is no need for you to try and determine which files are compressed and which files aren't. FM will do this automatically. All files are sent to the destination area and the orginals are left untouched. Check For Disk Space - With this button selected, File Magician will check the destination area before each file it copies to make sure there is enough free space. If not enough free space is available, FM will abort the process and inform you of the problem. Cancel - The Cancel of course aborts the procedure either before the copy process begins or will abort the process during the copy session. DOUBLE CLICKED .ZIP FILES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Double clicking of any .zip file has been changed. Now when a .zip file is double clicked a dialog box will appear and give you the option of extracting the file to the indicated destination area or loading the file into the 'Archive Commander'. You also have the option of changing the destination area that is indicated in the entry box. The entry box will automatically be defaulted to what path is showing in the destination area. Lha and Arj will still auto extract to whatever the destination area is when double clicked. LAST MINUTE STUFF ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Add2List - Use List for Archiving I've added the 'Use List' Function to Pkzip, Lha, and Arj. This allows you to archive any files or directories from any drive with a single call from any of the archivers. This works for archiving from multiple drives at the same time too. Its quite easy to do.. Step 1: Select the 'Del List' button. This clears the list. Step 2: Use either view to select any file or directory that you wish to archive. Then select the 'Add2List' button. You can then change directories or drives and select additional files. Each time you select files or directories, use the 'Add2List' button before moving on to the next drive or directory listing. Step 3: Call up whatever archiver you will use and select the 'Use List' button from the dialog box. Then enter the balance as you normally would when creating a archive. Thats it! How this works is when everytime you push the 'Add2List' button FM will write all your selected files to a file called 'Selected.Lst' in your configured 'Work Directory'. File Magician appends each selection to the end of this file, so the 'Selected.Lst' will continue to grow for each Add2List entry you make (the file is NOT over written, but continued). So this is why you should use the 'Del List' button when you begin something new. If you don't then all the previously selected files from another process that you did before would be included with whatever you are currently doing. Remember 'Selected.Lst' is a file and will always be there every time you boot FM, unless you push the 'Del List' button. Ok I'm going over this several times but I just wanted to get it clear <grin> DOS BUTTON ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Pushing the 'Dos' Button will give you the dos shell. File Magician expects to find the Windows supplied, "dosprmpt.pif" file. This file can reside in the windows directory or any directory that is included in the Path Environment. ENT COM ~~~~~~~~~~~ This is short For 'Enter Command'. Here you can enter a most dos commands from this line. There is a few exceptions and there is a few rules for the non exceptions. Windows is not very free with giving programmers control using dos functions and one would think that it is strongly discouraged at times. So if you wish to run a .pif file or a .com file you must include the extension. .EXE file are fine without the extensions. Anything that is within the Path Environment can be called without using the full path name, other then that you must use the full path name. Example in command line... format.com a: The MS_DOS commands such as 'dir', 'type', well forget it. MORE DRIVE SELECTIONS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FM now supports up to 12 drives. At least I hope it does. I've only been able to test a: to d:, but the coding is basically the same so there shouldn't be a problem. If so please notify me. With screen space getting very limited I split the orginal drive button space to add the additional 6 drives. In a higher resolution mode it looks quite cool. Well at least I think so. MULTIPLE MOUSE SELECTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Multiple files and/or directories can be selected or de-selected by holding down on the Left Mouse Button and moving the pointer up or down the view window. MENU - SAVE CONFIGURATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When selecting this item from the utilities menu, this will save all branches of the configuration, such as palette, Archive Settings etc. USE DESKTOP PALETTE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This item will absorb the current palette setting that you have made for your program manager desktop and apply them to FM's base palette. USE SYSTEM DESKTOP PALETTE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This Menu Item will load the stock Program Managers system palette settings and apply them as FM's base palette. OPTIMIZATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In laymen terms I've applied some special optimized coding to bring the .exe filesize down from 284K, to at this writing, 246K, almost 40K of disk savings and much faster execution. With the last minute stuff there still was 148K of additional .EXE coding to FM V3.0 over FM V2.0, just in case anyone was interested. Remember the 18K of F1 help was removed also. CLOCK ~~~~~~~~~ File Magician has two types of clocks. One a window and one for the menu bar, your choice. If you would like the clock to be present when you boot up just save the configuration while one of the clocks are active. When FM first boots windows does it thing in a certain order so when you pass your mouse over a section of the background window the clock will auto-activate. The background window is classified as anything other then the view windows. To de-activate the window clock you can do one of the following... Use the box clock menu again, it is always on toggle. Click on the clock to activate the window and use the close gadget, ESC key, or ENTER key. To de-activate the menu clock you must toggle the menu item again. NEW STUFF TO COME ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You bet! I still have a slug of ideas that I want to put into FM and I'm getting a slug more from the people that have called me. I know that many of the people that have called with suggestions will see that these ideas are in this version of FM. Thank you all very much!!!! A couple of the things that will be different with the next version of File Magician will be first, The Archive Commander. This will not only have a different look but it will have twice the control over the archives as it does now. I've been holding off a bit on this because I wanted to hear from the Pkware boys but I guess they must be too busy. Anyhow this will be a lot different. A second thing will be the actual archiving controls, this will change and give you more power over what you are doing. And a third is the graphic look of FM. Right now it is quite plain and it was left purposely this way until I had a chance to do something about it. Also I can't see why this can't be configured by the user of FM and why FM cannot have these configurations saved and loaded. INSTALLATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ V3.5 Note. The registered version of FM does contain a Installation program on disk. The evaluation copy does not. Follow the directions below with the addition of copying the .DLL file to your Windows\Systems directory. Currently there is not a installation program that goes with FM, its been a debate with me if there should even be one. Personally I feel a great deal of discomfort with installation programs that change what I've so painfully set up without even telling me about to begin with. File Magician has no need to change or add to any of your startup files or any .ini files in your windows directory. The best method to install FM is. Step 1: Create a directory on your hard drive with File Manager or whatever you are currently using as a file manager, call the directory FM or whatever name you wish to use. (as long as it is nice) Step 2: Copy all the files from the FM disk or .zip archive to that directory. Installation complete. Now all you need to do is assign it a icon and throw it in a group somewhere. With PCTools. --------------- Step 1: Go to the File Menu and Select 'New File'. Step 2: Enter in the Title box File Magician V3 . Step 3: Click on the 'Browse' Button and find your way to the FM Directory that you created and select FM.EXE, then push 'OK', the command line entry box will fill in automatically. Step 4: Click on the 'Icon' button. Select the icon that turns you on and select 'OK'. Step 5: Select 'OK' again from the File Item Box. Thats it. for PCTools With Program Manager ---------------------- Step 1: Go to the File Menu and Select 'New'. Step 2: Select 'Program Item' then 'Ok' Step 3: Enter in the Description box. File Magician V3 Step 4: Click on the 'Browse Button' and find your way to the FM Directory that you created and select FM.EXE, then push 'OK', the command line entry box will fill in automatically. Step 5: Click 'Change Icon'. You will get a message that says "There are no icons available for the specified file", no sweat, select 'OK'. Step 6: Select a Icon that you like and click on 'Ok'. Step 7: Select 'Ok' again. See, piece of cake. With Norton Desktop --------------------- Step 1: Go to the File Menu and select 'New' Step 2: Choose the group list you want. I would hope it would be 'AutoStart'. Select 'OK' Step 3: Select 'Item' for Type. Step 4: In Title section type 'File Magician V3', don't press return, use the mouse pointer to select 'Program/document/script:' Step 5: Click browse, find your way to the FM Directory that you created and select FM.EXE, then push 'OK', the entry box will file in automatically. Step 6: Click the 'Startup Directory' box and enter in the directory path that you used for FM. examp. c:\fm Step 7: Click on 'Icon'. Then select that icon that suits and select 'OK'. Thats it for Norton. His is probably the most difficult to set anything up for but it really isn't that bad. Presently I favor Norton in a number of items even if the rumors are true. Quite often rumors are simply user error created with impatience. I haven't examined PCTools all that well but it too seems to be a fine program. So far I don't realy see a need to switch desktops from the program manager but the utilities that accompany Norton and PC are quite quite handy when used by File Magician!! SOME OF THE OLD STUFF ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What I'm going to do is to insert a lot of the old docs and COMMENT: the different changes that have been made. After that a NEW ADDITIONS: section. Also bare with me on this, documentation is a definate short coming for me! Description (old) ~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, enough said on that subject! Now to tell a little about File Magician. File Magician has a similar interface as Disk Master v1.4 for the amiga, if you own a amiga and don't have Disk Master, get it , it is a must have. File Magician has two view windows, one is always the 'Source Window' and one is always the 'Destination' window. Source and Destination can be swapped by clicking the LMB in the window or in the path bar above the window. The clicked area will then become the 'Source' window. The 'Source' window will have a red box around it plus the little toggle bar between the windows at the top of the screen will also point to it. In the center of the screen between the two windows will be a column of push buttons. The first six buttons are for your drive configuations. The program will automatically configure to your current devices. The following buttons will perform the different functions as is explained below. Let me add at this point that File Magician is a shareware program and that it is for evaluation only. Somewhere there had to be a stopping point with File Magician as a evaluation program. File Magician can only grow from this point. I have over 50 planned functions that File Magician will have as time goes on, not counting new ideas that will be generated by time and user input. Basically File Magician has unlimited growth potential! User registation increases that potential many times over. Comment: I keep saying over 50 planned functions. jeez that has still has to hold true. The further along I get the ideas start doubling. File Magician V3 is evolving way past just a "File Manager" or "WinZip" type program. I don't look at it as a desktop replacement, even when it will easily double as one. Hm.. well, File Magician will be a tool that they always wished they had before, one that can do what others have always lacked. With the great response that I'm getting from people, I really don't see how it can be anything else. So Just What Is File Magician? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ File Magician is a program that EVERY PC owner must have. If you own a computer, at sometime during your computer lifetime you will Have To make some type of file or directory adjustment to your hard drive or floppy disks. File Magician is designed to be as simplistic as possible in allowing you to manage your files and directories. File Magician is for all levels of users, beginning to advanced. Requirments ~~~~~~~~~~~ A computer Windows 3.1 Be Registered How To Register ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Send a check or money order for $40.00 in US Funds to: Terry Bullard Bullard Software 3291 Mt. View Rd. Ferndale, Wa. 98248 Sorry but we don't accept credit card numbers. What You Get ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Once you register, we will send you 'File Magician' without the dialog boxes that appear when any item is first clicked. The program will be the lastest update of File Magician. A printed manual that to begin with will be soft bound. With the planned growth of File Magician it is not feasible to have any other type of manual. The cost of re-printing such would be terribly high and unfair to pass this unneccessary cost on to you.. You would be placed on our mailing list and would be notified immediately by mail of future updates of File Magician and any new products we develop. The package will be postage paid by us. Plus With Version 3.5 don't forget about the GOLD NUGGET! Re-read above. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NEW For Version 2.0 First and Most important before running File Magician! For Best results.. 1. Double Click on Window's pif editor. 2. Select 'Open' from the File Menu. 3. Select _default.pif from the selection box, then press 'OK'. 4. Locate 'Windowed' button and select to on. This is a radio button and if a dot appears in the middle of the circle it is then on. 5. Locate 'Close Window On Exit' button and select to on. This is a X type button and a 'X' in the square is on. 6. Now from the File Menu select 'Save As'. 7. The filename and path "C:\Windows\_default.pif" should be hi-lited in the file name box, if so, press 'OK', if not enter in your windows path adding the _default.pif filename and click 'OK' 8. A Dialog box will appear and inform you that the file already exists and ask you if you wish to 'Replace existing file?'. Select 'Yes' Doing this is the only windows adjustment that you must make. You may then decide where you wish place File Magician and what icon you may want it to have. NEXT Important thing.. File Magician's Configuration.. Nothing to it really but it might seem a bit complicated at first. V1.0 had a seperate configuration program, it was scrapped in favor of using multiple dialog boxes and just to avoid confusion. The configuration is done within the program during runtime. When the configuration is saved, a file called Magic.dat is created which contains your configuration in binary form. This can be changed at anytime and resaved. Included in the archive should be a sample of the configuration that I use, examine it if you wish and change it to suit your needs. When the program first boots up it will search for the Magic.dat file, once finding it, it will then load the settings. If the file is not available a requester will inform you of such and switch automatically to a default settings mode. Next click on the 'Config' button, a rather large dialog box should appear. The three boxes to the left of the dialog contain configurations for Pkzip, Pkunzip, Lharc, and Arj. To use these compression programs you must have the compression programs located in your path stream, such as c:\dos etc. change the default settings you must first have a working knowledge of these fine programs or except my usage of them. No attempt to explain their usage is located within the program. By clicking on the button with the programs name will open another dialog box where you may change the current settings to what you desire. The Dlbck button in each box tells File Magician to decompress a file when it is double clicked. (see below on double clicking) The next box to the right labeled 'Warn' tells the program to warn you if you are about to 'Copy', 'Delete', or 'Move' Files, if these boxes are not checked then the operation will commence without giving you the choice of backing out. The Next box to the right called 'Paths' is, for this release, a tempory working directory for the program. Here File Magician will sometimes write necessary files for its operation when handling dos assignments. The program will clean up after itself with the exception of two files that it re-uses at times. This directory will not grow, nor is there a real need to worry about it. BUT it must be there for the program to function properly!!! The final box for this release is called 'Names'. The top 4 entries are for Pkzip, Pkunzip, Lha, and Arj. If by some chance you call these programs by a different name you may enter your name to the right of the orginal programs name. The next choice down is 'Read'. There are many fine file reading programs available and the one I supply hasn't had enough time to be developed to a full potental, so if you wish to supply a different file reading program, enter in the programs name in the right box. The other program must be in the path stream or located in the same directory as File Magician. The following five boxes are left blank. For now these boxes can be used as CMDs and follow the same rules for Cmds, a bit further down will explain Cmds. Attributes - Pressing this button will display a configuration box that will allow you to chose what files with what attributes that you would like File Magician to display for your use. The 'Help' button will give you a very brief description of what each attribute is. 'OK' will allow the changes to be saved in the configuration save option. CMDS ~~~~~ CMDS - Short for Commands. File Magician allows you to run other programs, either dos or windows, ones that operate on files or are stand alone. There are 10 Command Button Cmds and 10 Menu Command Cmds. After you press the 'Cmd' button you will see 4 columns of string boxes. The first two columns are for buttons on the command screen and the second two columns are for the menus. The first row for either set, labeled 'Prg. Name' is the name of the program that you wish to use and it will be the name that will appear in the button box or menu box. The .exe extension is not necessary. The second column in either section labeled 'Argument' is the Path of the program if it isn't in the path stream or the program argument that is needed to make the program run. Most argument type programs work on files and/or have optional settings, needed to run the program. So in the second column you supply the needed settings/arguments and if part of those setting require a file name you would add '%s' without the quotes. This tells File Magician to substitute the %s with the file that has been selected in the active window. Again: %s = File selected in active window. Example Pkunzip (1st col.) -d -$ %s a:\ (2nd col.) You would click on a .zip and then click the Pkunzip (example name). Pkunzip would then decompress the selected .zip file to drive a: Now for a program that you like that isn't located in your path stream. We'll use WFinder.exe as a example WFinder (1st col.) Path c:\utils\ (2nd col.) Path tells the program that it is a path file not a argument file. You may run nearly anytype of program using cmds. The power that this configuration set gives you can be pretty awesome indeed!! Clicking the default button will preset everything back to my orginal settings. Clicking save will save all the adjustments that you have made to Magic.dat which will reside in the same directory as where you placed File Magician, so if you move File Magician be sure to move the Magic.dat file as well. Now that you have configured File Magician you can put it to work. The program has all the Copy, Move, and Delete functions of multiple files and directories (explained below) as a lot of the rest of the management programs but also has some other goodies. I should insert here about selecting file(s). File Magician has the ablility to select (tag) any amount of files at one time. You need not select all or only one as I've seen a lot of programs do. For those that wonder, I do NOT use the Windows List Box proceedure. It is a good idea and everyone uses it but I find it too limiting and to tell the truth a bit ugly. So everything is handled enternally with a big glob of extra coding by me. Yes I know that list boxes can select multible files but like I said I just don't like it. Compression: There are several ways to decompress .zip, .lha, arj files. 1. The File menu. First click on the file to decompress then go to the menu method and choose 'Extract'. If you only have a source window active the program will assume you wish to extract to the same directory as the source window indicates. A dialog box will appear asking you to 'Enter destination path', if you wish to extract there choose 'OK'. If you wish to extract to a different directory or drive, enter that path and choose ok. Or you may cancel the operation if you wish. Now if you have a destination window operational the program will assume that you wish to extract to that directory. If not you may follow the same proceedure above. 2. Double clicking. Provided that you have set your configuration section to double clicking you can use this method. Double clicking does not give you a choice to cancel, it is for fast and dirty work. If you do not have a destination window operational the program will extract to the source window. If the destination window is visible the program will automatically extract to destination window. This method works for all .zip, .arj, .lha files! File Magician can determine what type of file it is dealing with by binary means, extensions mean absolutely nothing and when a program deals with extensions in my opinion is a pretty stupid program. For .exe compression files, the file will only decompress in the source window area for now. This will be explored later. See double clicking below for additional abilities. 3. The Archive Commander... see below.. Archive Commander Note: The bottom still hold true but see above for additional functions. Archive Commander! For now the commander deals with .zip files only, later releases will have additional functions and possiblily other compression types. With the commander you can select up to 30 .zip file for enhanced handling. The program will do the counting for you so don't worry about being exact. Select the files that you wish to work on and then either from the menu select 'Archive Commander' or click the push button 'Command'. You will then be presented with a whole new screen. The two view windows, one called 'Archived Files', which is the big one on the left, and the other called 'Selected Archives', which is the smaller one in the center, then to the right are nine buttons. In the Selected Archives window will appear the .zip files you have previously selected, you may work on only one at a time for now (what I have planned is totally awesome but damned if I want to give the idea to someone else right now!). Select a file and click the 'Process' button or just double click the .zip, same thing, things will hum for a bit and the files that are within the archive will be displayed in the left view window. Here you may extract, read, delete any of the files by first selecting them and then choosing the operation button. If you wish to read or run a archive file just double click on it, the program determines the type through a binary method and works accordingly. To extract a file(s) first pay attention to the 'Destination' button. This button indicates below the button column as to where the extracted files will be sent. The options are .. 'Destination Window' - The destination path of the main command screen. 'Source Window' - The Source path of the main command screen. 'Your Specification' - Here a Dialog box will appear and allow you to type in the path of where you wish the extracted file to be sent to. Now Select the File(s) and push the extract button. The selected files will be sent to where you have set the Destination to be. The Commanders buttons: Process - Displays the selected .zip file's contents to the left window. same as double clicking the .zip file Extract - Explained above. Extract one or more of the contents of a archive. Delete - Deletes one or more of the archives contents. Just select which files you wish to delete and pust this button. Run - Select a file to run in the left window then pust this button. If the file is a stand alone program it should function correctly. Double clicking the file will also run it or read it if it is a .exe or any type of text file. Extensions DO NOT apply. Test - This Calls Pkunzip to test the archive and the File Magician's 'Reporter' displays the results. All - Selects all the files in the 'Archive Files' Section. Clear - De-selects any selected file in the 'Archive Files' Section. Double-Clicking ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ File Magician does NOT use the extension method to determine filetypes. The program will read a binary header from the file and determine what type of file it is dealing with. Currently File Magician understands .exe, .lha, .zip, .arj and text files. Must time WILL be spend in expanding the different filetypes for future updates. This will be one of the many major strengths that File magician will have. Currently you can double click a text file to read it, a .exe file to launch it and de-compress archived files as explained above. Path Bars ~~~~~~~~~~~ The path bar which is located above each view window shows the complete directory/device path to the current directory that the view window is displaying. With version 2.00 you can revalidate the file listing for that window just by clicking somewhere in the path bar. This is a lot better then hitting f2 or f3, which btw are still active for this function. Split ~~~~~~~ The Split function will split any selected file into two equal parts without harming the orginal file. Split will use the first four letters of the filename (or less if the file has less) and create two equal halfs with the _D1 _D2 tacked on. If the file is a odd byte size the second half will be 1 byte larger then the first. Files may be text to binary format. Duplicate ~~~~~~~~~~~ The Duplicate functions will duplicate a file in the same directory as the selected file. It too will take the first four letter and tack on a _Dup to the end. The file can then be renamed to something else. This command works on files only. I have thought about duplicating entire directories and files but before I do that I would like to hear some feed back on it if there is a need. Menus ~~~~~~~ Menus are new in this version of File Magician. In my opinion menus are nice only when you run out of room for push buttons! grin. With 38 push buttons on the main command screen and a ton more stuff to add, menus became necessary. *** Compression Menu *** _ Create Archive /_ Extract Archive Pkzip--/__ Pkzip Settings \__ PkUnzip Settings Create Archive - Select the files in a source window that you wish to compress as one archive. Select this option from the menu. You will then be asked to supply a archive name and supply a path for the archive to be created in if you do not like the default path. The default path will be the destination window if it is operational or the source if it isn't. You may specify whatever path to whatever device you wish. Selecting 'OK' will start the process. Extract Archive - Select the file to decompress and then select this option. A Dialog box will appear and ask you to enter the destination path. Default paths are the same as above. Pkzip Settings - If you wish to alter the current configuration settings for Pkzip you may select this option to do so. Altering the settings at the menu DOES NOT save to the configuration file. The settings will be active for the current session only. PkUnzip Settings - The same rules apply here as for Pkzip __ Creat Archive Arj--/__ Extract Archive \__ Arj Settings __ Creat Archive Lha--/__ Extract Archive \__ Lha Settings For Arj and Lha, the same proceedure applies to them as it does Pkzip *** CMD's *** See CMDs and The Configuration Section. Once the Cmd configuration for the menu section is setup and the configuration file is saved, File Magician will automatically rename the menu items to your specification. *** Utilities *** Drive status - will access the device that are current to both the Source and Destination window and display in the Title bar of the main screen the number of bytes that the disk has free. This function use to be automatic using a timer function but the timer it seems would always go off at the wrong time and access the drives therefore slowing down whatever I was trying to accomplish at the time so the function was stuck in a menu called extras. Extras will fill up as time and demand goes on. Now the only time a byte free function is called is when it is currently accessing the drive for some given reason. Command Buttons ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All of the command buttons on the main view screen are pretty much described below not counting the CMD buttons. Also there are seven buttons that are unaccounted for so to speak. The first one is in the last position of the first column of buttons. Currently it has no function attached to with this release. The other six are located in the right column starting with the fourth button from the top. The First of the six is also blank with nothing attached to it. The next five down have been temporary assigned as CMDs as explained above. The reason for this is future expansion and screen layout. The last five buttons that are assigned as CMDs will be assigned to something else unless public feedback demands that they stay as they are. If so I'll figure something to attach the assignments too. With version 1.0 there was only 1 column of buttons with the first 6 buttons assigned to drive specifications. Now the drive specifications are assigned to the first 3 buttons of each column. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now the Grit (old) ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now if you haven't already loaded File Magician you are one of the select few. Who reads the docs anyhow? (g) I'll try and keep it as brief as possible, but please read below on "what you can do for us". View Windows ~~~~~~~~~~~~ File Magician has two view windows. One is the 'Source' and one is the 'Destination'. The source window will always be the one with the red box around it. The Source and the Destination window can be swapped. To activate a 'Source' window, click in the window itself or click in the path bar above the window. Once a 'Source' window is established the opposite window automatically defaults to the 'Destination' window. Often a directory will have more file and directory listings then the view window can display. Use the scroll gadget to the right of the window to view the additional listings. The bottom scroll gadget is inactive with this release but is there for future compatability. Selection ~~~~~~~~~~ The left mouse button (LMB) is used to select a file or directory. Clicking once will select the listing and the listing will be hilited. Double clicking a directory will instruct the program to enter and display to the view window that directory listing. Double clicking a file listing causes No Action with this release of File Magician. The next release of File Magician will contain a a smart mode file selection. Smart Mode will be one of the main arteries of File Magician! When a file or directory is selected it means that the next command action will be taken on all files and directories selected. Changing to a different directory will de-select automatically all of the previous selections. No action will be taken on any file or directory that has Not been selected. Title Bar ~~~~~~~~~~ The title bar is used as a action display. There the program will show you the current action that is taking place such as, copying, deleting, or moving listings, bytes free on destination and source windows, files selected and total bytes of selected files. Currently there is a 5 second timer after a title information display before it defaults back to a byte free display. This may change to something else, what I'm not sure yet. Keyboard: ~~~~~~~~~ ESC - Will exit the program. Buttons: ********** Drive Buttons: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The first six buttons from the top of the screen are reserved for your drive devices. The program will automatically configure to the first six drive names in the list. Clicking the LMB on one of these will display the root contents to the window that is active. The view window will display yellow text as directories and white text as file. To enter a directory double click the name of the directory. COMMENT: See Drive Buttons for V3.5 Parent: ~~~~~~~ The 'Parent' button will direct the program to reassign the current directory back one directory. For instance, when you double click a directory name the program will display the contents of that directory to the view window, then you click the parent window, the program will re-display the previous directory. This command is completely harmless. The parent button only works on the 'Source' window. All: ~~~~ The 'All' command will select all the files and all the directories that are in the current directory of the 'Source' view window. If a directory has more files and directories then the view can be displayed, those files and directories will also be selected. Clear: ~~~~~~ 'Clear' will de-select any file or directory that has been previously selected. All files and directories outside of the view window will also be de-selected. Copy: ~~~~~ To use the copy function, first select a view window that you wish to become the Destination point. Next go to the opposite window and select the files or directories that you wish to copy. Press the 'Copy' button. Thats it. Copy will copy all files or directories that have been selected to the Destination device (view window). If a directory has been tagged, the program will create and copy all files and directories within the selected directory to the Destination point. This release Does Not have an option to check first to see if there is enough room in the destination area. The next registered release will. You may use the 'Byte Req' button on the Source directory before copying. COMMENT: See Copy for V3.0 above Rename: ~~~~~~~ To rename a file or directory first select the item then press the 'Rename' button. A dialog box will appear. Enter in the new name excluding the full path, the program keeps track of the location of the listings internally so just the new name will be enough. Select OK. Move: ~~~~~ The move function will move all files and directories that have been selected to the location of the destination area. Moving a selected listing means that basically the file is copied to destination area and then deleted from the source area. So once a listing is moved it will no longer reside in the source area! If a directory is selected, all files and directories that are buried within that selected directory will also be moved. COMMENT: See Move for V3.0 above Delete: ~~~~~~~ The 'Delete' button will delete all selected files and directories that have been selected from the 'Source' window. All files and directories that are buried within a selected directory will Also be deleted. With this version of File Magician, when the 'Delete' is first invoked, a dialog box will appear giving you the option of aborting. A later version of the program will allow you to discontinue this option. Read: ~~~~~ COMMENT: Read has been replaced with notepad.exe, until I can spare some time to make the reader that I really want to show. QEdit works very well for large files above 32K. Byte Req.: ~~~~~~~~~~ This function will total the bytes of all selected listings. If a directory is selected, all the bytes of all the files that are buried within that selected directory will be totaled and displayed on the title bar at the top of the screen. This function is very handy to use before moving or copying files to another device and just to know how large a directory might be. MakeDir: ~~~~~~~~ 'MakeDir' will create a directory in the location that the 'Source' window is displaying. Push the 'MakeDir' button, a dialog box will appear. Enter in the name of the new directory that you wish to create. Press 'OK' Run: ~~~~ The 'Run' function will attempt start any program that has been selected. 'Run' works on: .pif , .bat, .exe (dos or windows), .com (dos or windows), files. A little care must be used when using this command, it is not harmful but currently it has no way of checking to see how much memory an external application will use. Good judgement and a knowledge of how much memory your computer has and how fast your computer is makes a large difference with the results of this function. Personally I haven't had too much trouble using a 486(25) with 4 megs of memory and I was actually surprised on just what it would handle. Jeez I hope I didn't miss anything (probably did but it should be easy to figure out, after all that is the idea!) Current source size is well over 3.8 megs. So I'm sure I forgot something. GRIN Note: If you have read down this far be damn sure order now!!!! Terry Bullard Bullard Software 3291 Mt. View Rd. Ferndale, wa. 98248 (206)-384-6740 between (5:00 P.M. to 9:00 PM PST) (206)-384-2591 BBS