{note--this documentation is available online throught the Apple Guide Help Menu}
This is a beta release and I won't be making significant improvements to MacFile for several months. I am swiching from FutureBasic, which often doesn't follow Inside Mac documentation regarding the FIle Manager, to CodeWarrior, which will hopefully be much less aggravating to use to write this file utility. However, if you find a bug, I will try to fix it.
Because this is a beta, it has not been thoroughly tested--you are the beta tester :). I have used MacFile for several months on my own machine with no problems, and it should be fairly stable because all it does is call the Toolbox. After a significant period of use with no problems reported, I'll make an "officially stable" release.
General
This program makes it easy to perform file operations (lock, change type, etc.) on large numbers of files. To use MacFile, select files and folder in the Finder and drag & drop them onto the MacFile application, then select the desired operation from the "Operations" menu.
Support
If you have a problem or question regarding MacFile, you can email me at Ericb@psu.edu or Ericb888@aol.com (the first address will usually get you a much faster response) and I'll see what I can do for you. I welcome your comments and criticisms!
License
MacFile is freeware. However, if you like MacFile, I would greatly appreciate a $10 donation; if there is no interest in the program, I will probably not develop it much beyond its current form. Please send any donations (U.S. check or cash preferred, but your local currency is OK if obtaining U.S. funds is difficult) to:
Eric Bennett
459 Clarence Street
Johnstown PA 15905-1812
You may distribute MacFile for free, but you must distribute the application and the readme file together. You may not charge a fee for distribution of MacFile without first getting permission from the author (online service standard connection fees excepted).
I give the maintainers of the archives at sumex-aim.stanford.edu permission to distribute MacFile on the CD-ROM version of the archive.
Requirements and Limitations
MacFile requires System 7. You also need a moderate amount of free RAM. This program cannot handle more than 8,000 files at once, and may not be able to scan fully a folder which contains over 2,000 subfolders (the actual limit, which will be higher than 2,000, depends on the exact directory structure of the drive being scanned). If you have more, you'll have to split the files into groups (sorry). I hope to dispose of this limitation when I rewrite MacFile.
Performance
To increase the performance of MacFile, you can turn off "show progress" in the file menu--when active, this option shows the name of each file as it is being processed. Also, file verification will be faster for large files if you allocate more memory to MacFile (the program will be able to use a larger read buffer; performance seems to reach a peak at a 900k buffer on my system). If you run MacFile with many system extensions, select "show progress," and aren't generous with RAM when verifying files, MacFile will be noticeably slower during long operations.
How to use MacFile
Before you can perform any operations, you must give MacFile a list of files to work with. To do this, select the files you want to manipulate from the Finder. Then drag them onto MacFile's icon. If you drag a folder onto MacFile, it will read the list of files inside the folder unless you tell it otherwise (MacFile does not perform operations on folders themselves, only the files inside them). MacFile will display the message "Getting incoming files..." as it gathers information about the files you have given it. When it is finished, it will display the total number of files currently in the file list.
The rest of this section describes what the menu commands do; it should give you a good idea of what MacFile can do (I would like to add much more in future versions).
File Menu
Close Window. Closes the active window, with the exception that you cannot close the log window.
Scan Nested Folders. What should MacFile do when it is scanning a folder for files and it finds another folder? If this item is checked, MacFile scans the subfolder as well; otherwise it ignores the subfolder.
Show Progress in Log. When this item is selected, MacFile will display (in the log window) how far it has progressed through the current operation. This decreases the program's speed noticeably for many operations.
Quit. MacFile saves the current settings and quits.
Edit Menu
There is only one command here which is useful in MacFile; the others are present for compatibility reasons.
Preferences... This allows you to specify defaults for MacFile.
Operations Menu
This menu contains file operations. When you select a command, it will be executed on all files in the file list.
Delete Data Forks. This command is irreversible! This command erases each file's data fork. It does not affect the resource fork, nor does it delete the file. This command may be useful for removing the native PowerPC code from "fat binary" applications since the PPC code is usually stored by itself in the data fork. However, this is not always the case, so if you are trying to remove PPC code from an application, perform the data fork deletion on a backup copy of the program in case this technique does not work with your application. Note: deleting both the resource fork and the data fork does not remove the file from your hard drive; it still exists but contains no data.
Delete Resource Forks. This command is irreversible! This command erases each file's resource fork. It does not affect the data fork, nor does it delete the file. This is a useful command because some files have resource forks with useless information (examples include flattened QuickTime movies and files saved with some graphics and sound programs in which the resource fork contains nothing more than a string identifying the program which made the file). On large hard disks with large allocation blocks, a useless resource fork containing only 30 or so bytes of [useless] data might occupy 30k or more; thus, erasing these resource forks can save space on your drive. Note: deleting both the resource fork and the data fork does not remove the file from your hard drive; it still exists but contains no data.
Lock Files. This command locks all files. A locked file cannot be renamed, deleted, rewritten, or otherwise modified until it is unlocked.
Unlock Files. This command unlocks files so that they may be rewritten, renamed, deleted, or otherwise modified.
Set Creator. This command allows you to change the four-character creator type of a file. The system uses this information to determine what program created each file.
Set Type. This command allows you to change the four-character file type of a file. Programs and the system software use this to determine what type of data a file holds.
Hide Files. This makes all files "invisible" so that you can't see them from the Finder (many other applications will still recognize them, however).
Show Files. This makes all files "visible" so that you can see them from the Finder. Try this on your entire hard drive sometime--you may find some files you never knew were there before!
Verify Files. This command checks to be sure that all files in the list are readable. When this operation has finished, MacFile displays the average data transfer rate (valid only if there were no errors during the transfer).
File List Menu
This menu allows you to view and manipulate the file list. At the moment there's not much here of interest, but I have some neat ideas for future releases.
Alphabetize. This sorts the files in the list by name. Lower and upper case letters are considered to be equal.
Clear List. This command erases the file list so that you can work with a different set of files.
Reverse List. This command reverses the order of the files in the list. {NOT YET IMPLEMENTED}
Show File List. Opens a window which contains the list of files.
[Balloon] Help Menu
MacFile Help. Displays this document.
Known Bugs
Log window blanks out after too many entries are made. Any time I ask the list manager to remove one of the log entries, the whole thing vanishes (I have been unable to fix this bug).
Version History
1.0b1 10/09/95
0.18a 7/30/95 Fixed bug in Change File Type/Creator which resulted in a file not found error for files outside the root directory of their volume.
0.17a 1/14/95 Fixed bug in Hide/Show files which restricted the operation to the boot volume.
