Mac Mania 4/MacMania 4.toast//Multimedia & Desktop/gsu-amanuensis/Amanuensis - Read Me

Text File | 1993-03-02 | 6KB | 111 lines

RELEASE NOTES FOR AMANUENSIS

This is a utility of the 'one dumb job' variety. It does one job,
and does it fast and with minimal hoorah.

Amanuensis is SYSTEM 7 ONLY. Its only interface is Drag and Drop,
so you cannot use it with earlier Systems. If you double-click on
it from a System 6 machine, you will get an error message and the
software will quit gracefully.

To use Amanuensis _with_ System 7, simply select the files you want
to duplicate and drag them on the program's icon or an alias of it.
New files will be created, and your original source files will
remain unaltered.

Amanuensis does this: it duplicates files, combining the Finder
functions Duplicate (CMD-D) and Option-Copy in one very fast
utility. It 'sees' files of any type, and it duplicates both the
data and resource forks. An Amanuensis duplicate is an exact
copy of the original.

If you simply Drag & Drop files on the Amanuensis icon, new files
will be created in the same folder as the original. These new files
will have the extension ".DUP" appended to their names.

If you hold down the Option key while Dragging & Dropping, you will
be prompted for a different folder/volume to duplicate the files
into. The prompt takes the form of a standard SFPutFile dialog, and
the filename prompt is meaningless; we're just navigating to the
folder you want. If you hit "Cancel", no files are copied and the
software quits gracefully. If you hit "OK" but are in fact in the
same folder as the original files, the originals will be duplicated
as above, with the extension ".DUP" appended to their names. If you
select a _different_ folder/volume, the files will be duplicated
under their original names, with no extension appended.

IMPORTANT: Amanuensis presumes you know what you're doing! The
whole point of the excercise is speed, so we are skipping a lot of
overhead and error-checking. For instance, before creating a
duplicate file, Amanuensis deliberately deletes any file in the
folder already having that name. The original is safe, but any
previously made duplicate will be toasted unless it is renamed.
Likewise, we are not checking to see if the duplicate will fit on
the selected volume. This stuff is up to you. If this makes you
uneasy, by all means stick with the Finder.

BUT: This is a nice little tool. For both devlopment and
publishing, I frequently duplicate files - I take the chance with
the original, knowing that I can always fall back on the copy. And,
very often, I'll want to copy a great host of files to another
folder - back-up, storage, network transfer, sneakernet traffic,
etc. The first problem is solved with a Drag & Drop. The second
with an Option-Drag & Drop. Amanuensis is much faster than the
Finder, even the Finder hacked for bigger buffers, and the more
files there are, and the larger the files, the faster it is.
Moreover, for copying to other folders/volumes, navigating by SF
has it all over opening a bunch of Finder windows (even Finder
windows with their zoomRects hacked out (grin)).

HOWEVER: An Amanuensis duplicate differs slightly from a Finder
copy. First, the Finder keeps the orignal's creation and modified
dates, while Amanuensis uses the current time and date. I can't
believe this would ever be a problem. Second, Amanuensis duplicates
the _original_ of an alais, where the Finder duplicates the alias
itself. This might be an issue, but, of course, you wouldn't gain
much from Amanuensis copying a 2K file, in any case. And third,
Amanuensis won't duplicate a folder and all its files, the way the
Finder will. It doesn't see folders at all, nor volumes, only
files.

FINALLY: I'm Captain Drag & Drop, for sure. I like _writing_ D&D
utilities, because I can solve a problem in a few minutes, as
opposed to a few hours (or days!) for anything with a real
interface. But: I love _using_ D&D software, because it's a
fabulous batch-operation metaphor, _much_ better than command-line
batch operations, which I had missed. The only problem is, Drag &
Drop tools have to be available to be dropped upon. My solution,
which I've mentioned, is a folder called "Alias Palatte" (sp?) that
lives off of the right edge of my screen, next to my drives. In it
is one vertical column of aliases shown at their small icon size.
That way, I have access to my most commonly used tools all the
time. In this archive is a small TeachText PICT file showing this
arrangement, in case it helps to see it.

Greg Swann
12/10/92



ADDENDUM REGARDING VERSION 1.0.1

Kip Shaw hit me with a nice little idea today. Not a great, grand
idea, a mere lepton of an idea that is nevertheless potentially
quite useful. The problem is this: if you use my stuff, you end up
with some real jawbreaker filenames, e.g., "file.TQM.XP8.TQM". Kip
wanted a way of trimming away all of those extra extensions, and I
decided to implement the feature here, in Amanuensis. So, if you
hold down the Command key as Amanuensis launches, files will be
copied into the same folder as the original, and the name of the
file will be truncated at the first period (after a non-period).
For example, "file.TQM.XP8.TQM" would yield "file.DUP". A file
called "...file.TQM.XP8.TQM" would result in a new file callled
"...file.DUP", since we only truncate at a period after a
non-period, presumably an extension. And a file called "file" would
result in "file.DUP", since there is no period in the original
filename. If you hold down both Option and Command, the Option
option will be honored (IOW, you will copy with the original name
to a selected folder).

1/7/93