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• SHAREWARE - $5 - CASH ONLY
◊ This program is distributed as Shareware: if you use it regularly you should send $5 to the author. Since collecting international cheques is VERY expensive, please send CASH ONLY. VERY expensive means that banks charge some $15 to $30. Thus, DO NOT send cheques, please.
◊ NOTE: Getting a note, a postcard or anything else is a lot better than getting nothing. I would like to know how far this program has gone, so remember that you can do something nice even if you do not have a couple of $ to spare.
• GENERAL INFO
◊ ChunkJoiner is a small utility that lets you join (concatenate) any group of files in a single piece. To use it, simply select the files you want to join, and drag&drop them onto ChunkJoiner. You will be asked the “type” and “creator” for the newly created file. You will be also asked for the name of the application which can open the resulting file; the Finder 7.x can read this name and show it to the user if the application is not present.
◊ ChunkJoiner physically combines the documents, so it is not advisable to use it on segments produced by StuffIt™, Compact Pro™, et al.
I received several questions about joining Word (and other word processors’) documents together. You can accomplish this task by saving the documents in RTF format, join them, then open the resulting document.
◊ ChunkJoiner operates on data forks, because by joining resource forks you would obtain a corrupted resource file.
◊ The files are joined in the Finder selection order. That is, click on the first file, shift-click on the second, and so on, then drag&drop. To use the file name alphabetical order, view the files by Name, Select All, and drag&drop. With this method, you can join also by size, kind, label, date, version, or comments.
◊ You can launch ChunkJoiner multiple times in a networking environment, as well as from a locked disk (CD-ROMs are welcome; by the way, if this application is included on a CD it would be nice to send me a complimentary copy of it).
◊ ChunkJoiner is intelligent enough to use temporary memory (when available), so you do not have to get mad setting its memory partition (unless you want to join many files). Furthermore, it works even if you have not enough memory to read entirely the files you want to combine. When virtual memory is active, ChunkJoiner cleverly optimizes its memory allocation scheme in order to minimize the disk activity when joining large files.
◊ ChunkJoiner can only be used under System 7 or later; if you try to start it up under older versions of the System you will get an error message. Sorry, System 6 users!
◊ You will notice that you cannot double-click the application and open files one by one, which is rather cumbersome; use drag&drop instead!
◊ When joining, you should hear one distinctive sound for each file that is being joined. The sound is played asynchronously, so that the Mac is not interrupted when concatenating. If you are working on a Macintosh equipped with an Apple Sound Chip and lots of files are being gathered, you might hear sounds one over the other. If the Macintosh has no Apple Sound Chip, you might hear only one sound at a time.
◊ Need to join files in background, exploiting asynchronous I/O? Currently I have not much time to implement it. Try convincing me ... send the fee and write in caps ASYNCHRONOUS!
• DISCLAIMER
◊ “No warranties at all, either express or implied…” “All trademarks are held by their respective owners…” and all that stuff.
This application should do no damage, but if it does then you will be on your own. Let me know of any bugs you run into, anyway.
• VERSION HISTORY:
◊ 1.1 - Various fixes; new handy option if your e-mail gateway splits long messages.
◊ 1.0.6 - Revised the code; now saves its preferences.
◊ 1.0.5 - Fixed an incredible bug, causing ChunkJoiner not to quit after joining.
◊ 1.0.4 - The registration form greedily asked for $10 instead of $5; various minor fixes.
It seems that the new Sound Manager and/or the Speech Manager want too much stack space, so that sound playing often failed. I increased my stack requirements, even if I think that this is a bug in the Apple Managers.
◊ 1.0.3 - Added a nifty registration form.
◊ 1.0.2 - Corrected the check box misinforming that the files are deleted after joining: the files are actually deleted while the joining is in progress, that is, the file you dropped is deleted as soon as it is appended to the destination file. Why this “unsafe” behavior? Because sometimes I have to join large segments in a big single file, and my hard disk would not hold both the originals and the joined file; deleting the originals while joining lets me join even if I am short of disk space.
The Command-period key combination is detected in the Apple-approved way; the previous method I adopted, although pretty straightforward, does not work (according to Apple) on some international keyboards.
◊ 1.0.1 - Fixed a silly bug: I was not locking the sound handle because I assumed that the Sound Manager did it for me; nicely indeed, this bug was consistent across all my applications (the advantages of code reusability, you know). Sound Manager 2.x locked the handle for me (I observed that with Swatch), whereas Sound Manager 3.0 does not. The bug was found by Alessandro Levi Montalcini on the phone: «Oh, I am quite sure you are not locking the sound handle…».
You can continue joining if you press esc by mistake.
Fixed a potential bomb (no bashing, please) which could happen if you stopped the process (I forgot to initialize a Handle to nil).
◊ 1.0 - First public release.
To report errors, suggestions, or whatever, send e-mail to simula3@di.unito.it
