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Text File | 1995-12-28 | 31.2 KB | 624 lines

++ REVISION HISTORY ++ This file describes functionality changes other than minor bug fixes. Changes in the current version of EDDY are described first. Changes to versions prior to 7a have been deleted, as there isn't a lot of interest in ancient history among the user base, and the file was getting pretty big. If you have one of the older versions, and feel that you need this information, I'll be glad to send it to you. Just ask. Version 8b ========== Bug fix: EMM usage caused "hang" when used with QEMM Version 8a ========== 1. Support for installing and running EDDY under Windows is now provided. That does NOT mean EDDY is now a Windows program! See EDDY.DOC, Section 1.3. 2. Users of earlier versions of EDDY will immediately notice a big change in the way file attributes are displayed. Most obviously, the attributes are now represented by their initial letter (correspon- ding to the field heading) if they are ON, while a "." indicates an attribute that is OFF. If you prefer the old style display, press [Tab]. You can customize to make your preferred style the default. See EDDY.DOC, Section 4.4 for details. The heading for file attributes is also changed slightly: "S" now means "System" and "N" means "Network-shareable". Formerly, "Y" was used for "System" and "S" meant "Shared". The old "S" and the new "N" refer to the same physical attribute bit. Editing the attributes is different: - [+] used to be an attribute toggle; now, [+] turns an attribute ON, and moves down one line, while [-] turns an attribute OFF and moves down. - You may also press the attribute letter when the cursor is in the attributes field, which toggles the attribute setting between ON and OFF. The cursor doesn't move. - [y] and [n] work just as before. 3. [Tab] is no longer used for its eponymous purpose: i.e., it no longer moves the cursor. (I've been waiting years for a chance to use that word in print! <g>) This change has been made due to confusion over its use in other cases, such as toggling between text and hex modes in LOOK. To do "tabbing" in the normal word processing sense, press [right bracket] (it's spelled out to avoid the strange-looking "[]]"). Similarly, to "tab left", press [left bracket] ("[[]"). LOOK mode tabbing is consistent with this. [t] and [T] -- never a popular choice -- have been replaced by [right bracket] and [left bracket], respectively. [Tab] is always a toggle, and traditional "tabbing" is always done with the "square bracket" keys. 4. A number of users have reported erratic movement problems when using a mouse. The mouse-handling logic has been reworked extensively. All problems that I have been able to reproduce have been fixed. See EDDY.DOC, Appendix C, for details. Mouse-related changes are: - If you double click on an entry in the EDIT mode directory display, or if you move the cursor off the right end of the file display line, the cursor will move to the MENU box. - Clicking in any blank area in the right side of the display is the same as clicking on the MENU box. - If you double click on the MENU box, the last command you have used by selecting from the menu will be repeated. This is particularly useful for tagging several files for the same action, such as COPY or DELETE. - If you click both the left and right buttons within the double click interval, the result is the same as if you pressed [F1]. - If you double click on the HELP box, HELP's keyword search screen will appear, just as if you had pressed [Shift+F1]. - If you click on the scrollbar's "slider" (the left- or right- pointing triangle), the mouse button usage will change from right-handed to left-handed, or vice versa. - The "double click speed" interval is now customizable. 5. The destroy command now offers an option that conforms to the U.S. government specs for destruction of files, to ensure that even special-purpose equipment cannot recover the data that was previously stored there. It also allows you to destroy a disk! Not really -- read EDDY.DOC, Section 13.3 for info on why you might want to do this. 6. In a way complementary to the previous item, you may now create a file containing all currently-unallocated sectors on a disk: LOOK at the disk, and press [^u]. The file will be created on that same disk, and thus eats up all the available space. You may browse (snoop?) in the file, or whatever you like, but you'll eventually have to move it or delete it before you can do much more with that disk. 7. When you are LOOKing at the raw disk, press [Alt+b] to view any "bad spots" flagged in the disk's FAT. 8. Press [Alt+o] to find out which file or directory "owns" the area of the disk currently displayed. 9. When a disk "bad spot" is encountered during a copy or move, one of the options you'll be offered is "Retry". 10. When you LOOK at the boot record or MBR on a disk, the display will automatically be show the formatted, text mode screen. As for any other LOOK mode screen, you may toggle to hex by pressing [Tab]. 11. Wasted space can be calculated on the basis of clusters that a file occupies (which is correct for "real" disks -- i.e., not compressed volume files), or on the basis of sectors (which is a better approximation of actual space wasted on CVFs). To toggle between the two bases, press [Shift+Tab]. See EDDY.DOC, Section 1.5.4. 12. Previously, there were some commands that EDDY refused to run on a "compressed disk" (e.g., Stacker). These included editing directory timestamps, and sorting/shuffling directories permanently. Now, if you REALLY want to, you can disregard EDDY's warning and do these things. Although these features have been tested successfully with several combinations of compressed disks and MS-DOS versions, there's no guarantee they'll work correctly for you. Be careful! 13. When you use the DOS Gateway, more RAM can be made available to the processes you run. If you use the DOS environment variable "TEMP", or customize EDDY to include a "swap path", a temporary file will be created in the specified directory when you use the Gateway, and various parts of EDDY will be stored there until you return to EDDY. The RAM used will be released for whatever you want to do. 14. After a point-n-shoot command, if the command is set up to pause after execution (so you can look at the results on the screen), the DOS ERRORLEVEL is checked. If it's non-0, its value is displayed. 15. [\] in EDIT mode or when viewing a tree diagram works identically to [^\], bringing up the drive selection window. Much quicker than using [Alt+w] when all you want to do is change drives: press [\], then the drive letter, and you're done. 16. EDDY.USE may now specify control strings for your printer. These are described in detail with the examples provided in EDDY.USE. To select and send these control strings to your printer, press [Alt+9] and follow the directions given. 17. Formfeeds and linefeeds may be sent to your printer by pressing [Alt+0] and [Alt+1], respectively. 18. [Alt+number] formerly had two functions: in EDIT mode, to tag a file for copying with tab expansion (where "number" was in the range 0 thru 8); and in LOOK mode, to specify the tab expansion factor for the display. These functions are now performed by [Alt+#] (actually, [Alt+3] is OK -- you don't need to [Shift]). The expansion factor (still 0 thru 8) is entered in response to the prompt that appears after you press [Alt+#]. 19. When you are using a file specification other than "*.*" to select which files are displayed, and you want to change to use "*.*", press [Alt+w] and then [.]; fewer keystrokes, no shift. 20. List files may now include subdirectories if desired. 21. When you customize, the current parameter values are now appended to EDDY.INI without their accompanying comments, to save disk space. 22. Lines in EDDY.DOC that have changes or have been added since the last release are indentified by a "@" in column 1. 23. The "Command Reference" (Appendix A in EDDY.DOC) has been reorganized for (I hope!) easier use. 24. EDDY's "nagging" of unregistered users gets just a little heavier. Version 7w ========== 1. The # of bytes of "wasted", or slack, space for each directory is shown below the "bytes used". This is the difference between the clusters allocated to the files and the actual sizes of the files. If this number is large in most of your directories, you may be able to increase your usable disk space by re-partitioning your disk. See EDDY.DOC, Section 1.5.4. 2. The "exclusion" feature allows you to specify that files with names matching your file specification should NOT be included in the display, by pressing [*]. See EDDY.DOC, Section 17.4. 3. When viewing the MBR (press [@] while LOOKing at a disk), the initial screen comes up with the readable Partition Table display, eliminating the need for pressing [Tab]. Version 7v ========== 1. The reason for this release is to expand (more than double) the num- ber of files that can be handled by EDDY within one sorted display. Formerly, the limit was less than 400 files; now, it is over 800. Version 7u ========== 1. Upgrading to a new version of EDDY is much easier. EDDY saves your customized configuration and your registration information in a file (EDDY.INI), and restores from that file when you customize again (i.e., when you run EDDY/0). Details in EDDY.DOC, Section 26.4. 2. When you customize, EDDY.COM is no longer required to be in your working directory. The new EDDY.COM will be written to the directory from which EDDY was loaded. 3. When you use [^Enter] rather than [Enter] to start an update, EDDY will normally always ask how you want to handle the timestamp. Before, no question was asked if you were using a customized copy of EDDY. If you want to have [^Enter] proceed (to set the timestamp opposite to the [Enter] default method) without asking, customize EDDY.INI with the "timestamp=auto" parameter setting. 4. With the introduction of EDDY.INI, the customizing-by-patching capability is no longer required. Customizable data locations are no longer guaranteed to be at their previously-documented offsets in EDDY.COM. Similarly, the command line option "/9" is no longer needed. It is replaced by the "max lines" parameter in EDDY.INI. 5. [Alt+k] from EDIT mode gives you a "key name string" corresponding to keys or shifted key combinations. This string may be used to define keys to be used when customizing from EDDY.INI. Version 7t ========== Fixed problem with EDDY v.7s, which caused keyboard to lock up whenever mouse was used. Version 7s ========== 1. The CRC calculation in the "snapshot" process has been made more secure (i.e., harder to produce the same CRC when a file has been modified maliciously). 2. ThunderByte Anti-Virus, in "heuristic" mode, kept insisting that EDDY was "probably" infected with a virus, when there was actually no virus present. The code that caused this false alarm has been restructured. Version 7r ========== 1. When "target tracking" is selected, the "Target:" display at the lower right-hand corner of the screen changes to "Target=". 2. When unusually long paths -- longer than can be displayed in the space available on the screen -- are used, they are "abbreviated", as described in EDDY.DOC, Section 1.4.1. 3. Fix problems with FIND and volume labelling Version 7q ========== 1. Fix problem with message displays for "Jump" command in LOOK mode Version 7p (version 7o skipped) ========== 1. The target directory currently in use (if any) is always shown in the lower-right hand corner of the EDIT mode display. This is introduced in connection with item #2, below; however, having worked with it a bit, I don't know why I didn't do this a long time ago! 2. "Target tracking" is provided to assist in synchronizing directories that have similar subdirectories but different parent directories. This is explained more fully in EDDY.DOC, Section 5.2.3. 3. If while you are LOOKing at a file, you exit to DOS and modify or delete that file, EDDY will display a message to that effect. Version 7n ========== 1. Pressing [^\] from EDIT mode displays a list of valid drives (as previously). Selecting a drive other than the working directory's drive changes the working directory to be the DOS default directory on the selected drive. If the drive you select is the same as the working directory's drive, the working directory is set to be the root directory of that drive. Previously, when you pressed [^\] from EDIT mode, and you were not using the "tree" method for directory selection, you would be placed in tree select mode as soon as you pressed a drive letter. 2. [^f] will FIND strings in any file in the directory tree, rather than just in the working directory. If you press [^f] and there are subdirectories in the working directory, you'll be asked whether you wish to search those as well. 3. The SNAPSHOT facility is improved. When you take a snapshot -- [Shift+F5] -- of a directory that has subdirectories, you will be given the choice to "snap" the entire subtree. If you choose this, snapshot files will be created in each subdirectory. Then when you later compare snapshots to current directory contents -- [Shift+F3] -- you will see exactly where within that entire tree changes have been made. 4. You can have multiple commands in EDDY.USE for the same files. Best is to put the command you use most frequently first, followed by others that you sometimes use. See EDDY.USE for an example of this with respect to ZIP files. If the command displayed when you first press [Shift+F9] is not the one you want, press [PgDn] to get the next one. 5. When you use the keyword search facility in HELP, the lines where the keywords are will be in reverse video. Version 7m ========== 1. Now there's assistance to cope with EDDY's mushrooming "feature- itis": you can find HELP on a subject by doing a keyword search on EDDY's entire set of HELP screens (over 40), rather than tediously paging through them. Press [F1] for HELP-in-context, as always, and then press [F1] again for the HELP topic menu. A new selection there is "Topic Search by Keyword". Press [Enter], and follow the directions from there. You may also use [Shift+F1] as a shortcut. 2. When copying portions of a disk image, you may now override the default filename if you wish. 3. You can select portions of a file, disk or RAM by "marking" them (press [m] in LOOK mode). Marking causes the selected portion to be highlighted in the display. You may then copy the marked area to a file (your choice of name), or copy everything EXCEPT the marked area. Marking is described in EDDY.DOC, section 8.6. 4. When LOOKing at a disk, pressing [Tab] produces a formatted, readable display of the disk's boot sector. 5. When LOOKing at a disk, pressing [@] produces a formatted, readable display of the disk's Master Boot Record, if there is one. When the boot sector (offset 00000000h) is on screen, pressing [PgUp] has the same effect as [@]. 6. With EDDY's "filter" functions ([Alt+a] or [Alt+q]), directories are not shown in the resulting display unless they satisfy the filter criteria. If you use [^a] or [^q] instead, you will be given the choice of whether to display directories or not. 7. Printing may be directed to a file (your choice of name), by using [^p] rather than [Alt+p]. If your printer is on a port other than EDDY's default of LPT1, the default port may be changed. 8. You may create "list files" -- ASCII text files with lists of chosen filenames -- by pressing [Alt+l] (that's an "ell" not a "one"). See Section 1.7 of EDDY.DOC for info on how to and why you might use this. Version 7L ========== 1. When a file is tagged for "Copy" or "Move", and there is no file of the same name already in the target directory, a "Copy+" or "Move+" will appear. 2. When LOOKing at a directory entry on disk, the display produced by pressing [Alt+d] is changed so that the attributes are shown in the same order as their corresponding bits in the attribute byte. Version 7k ========== This is primarily a maintenance release, addressing these problems: 7k - When marking and copying sectors on disks having a cluster size equal to the sector size (i.e., many floppies), the SECTORS.{x} file created was always empty. 7j - With disks having a number of clusters larger than 32,767, use of option /D sometimes produced invalid directory sizes (too large). 7j - With these disks, operations on the directory tree (Copy, Move, Delete) sometimes hung the system. 7h - Paths and filenames containing the "invisible" character 0FFh were not displayed properly, and hung the system if used with the tree selection feature for working/target directory changing. These problems are now fixed. Some minor enhancements: 1. When you press [Shift+F9] to execute a command from EDDY.USE on the current file, AND the current file matches EDDY.USE only on an entry in EDDY.USE starting with "*.*", AND the current file is executable (.BAT, .COM or .EXE), the command from EDDY.USE will not be used. Instead, EDDY will offer to execute the current file, just as though you had pressed [Alt+F9] originally. 2. When doing a FIND, [/] works identically to [f]. 3. When doing a directory MOVE (not using the "fast move" method), EDDY copies the tree to the target, then deletes the tree from the working directory. As an additional safety measure, you are asked whether you want this final deletion to proceed. If not, the result is as though you had done a COPY rather than a MOVE. Version 7g ========== 1. You can record the contents of a directory (a "snapshot") by pressing [Shift+F5] on either the top ("DIR of...") line or the "." line of the display. This creates a file -- SNAPSHOT{.} -- which EDDY may later use (if you press [Shift+F3] on one of those same lines) to compare with the current directory, and tell you of any changes which have occurred since the snapshot was taken. 2. In LOOKing at text files, line numbers up to 999,999 are displayed; before, the displayed line number "wrapped" at 65,535. Version 7f ========== The main reason for this version is to correct some problems that have crept in, appearing only to users of XT-class systems. My own XT went south a few months ago, and I have failed to test new releases on that platform. However, a good proportion of my user base is using XTs, and their complaints are coming in! Anyway... I've found another XT, and I'll test all future releases on it. I think the platform-related bugs are all fixed -- the worst was a "red-button" hang on some machines as soon as the initial display came up. There was also a lot of unnecessary re-displaying that made EDDY virtually unusable for anyone using a slower screen, such as a CGA. Other changes: 1. [Alt+0] thru [Alt+8] previously tagged a file for COPY with TAB removal; now only [Alt+0] is used for this, and EDDY will ask you to provide the desired TAB interval separately. Version 7e ========== 1. Data error ("bad spot") recovery is improved: When copying or moving files that have read errors, you may choose to skip the bad data, copy it as is, or replace the bad data with "#"s (or other character, if you customize EDDY). 2. Some of the files have been renamed, so that they once again all begin with "EDDY", and so won't overwrite files from other packages when you copy them (except for FILE_ID.DIZ - no choice on that). Version 7d ========== 1. Registration info is available by pressing [Alt+z]. 2. You can copy and move directories, with all their files and sub- directories, from any disk to any other disk. 3. The COPY/MOVE/DELETE Controls are now called "Synchronization Controls". Their function remains the same, but the description of their use (in EDDY.DOC) has been expanded and (hopefully) clarified. 4. If you rename a file, even before you update to make the new name permanent, the new name will be used in any comparisons made (e.g., [Shift+F3], [Alt+Shift+F3]). Thus you may type the new name over the old to do comparisons between files and directory entries which have different names, and then UNDO the rename if you don't really want to make the change. The new name will also be used for comparing timestamps for copy and move operations, according to the settings of the Synchronization Controls. 5. Disk image copying has been changed. The name of the file in which a full disk image will be stored is now "DRIVE.{C}" (if you're copying from drive C:). If you mark and then copy selected portions of a disk, the data will be written to a file named "SECTORS.{C}". You may copy all or part of the disk's system area -- boot sector, FAT, root directory -- without copying the entire disk. 6. EDDY no longer restricts you from patching sectors on a compressed disk (Stacker, et al). After a warning, you may proceed if you really want to. 7. Volume labelling capabilities are expanded. A label may contain ANYTHING you want -- even "\", ":", etc. It may even be set to all spaces if you wish. Labels may also be deleted. 8. When using the default point-n-shoot command -- [Shift+F8] or [Shift+^F8] -- you may choose whether to pause after the command is executed or not, and whether the command should execute only on files with the same extension as the current file or on any file. 9. The Synchronization Control setting of "C" is now used in batch mode as well as interactively. See EDDY.DOC, Section 24.3 for more info. 10. Some users have complained that their mice move erratically, especially when using the menus. Although unable to reproduce this problem, I have changed EDDY to reduce the horizontal mouse sensitivity by half when working with menus. I hope this helps. Version 7c ========== 1. Now you can register your copy of EDDY by credit card! Please see details in EDDY.DOC, Section 27.2. 2. Directory sorting can be made permanent. You can also arrange your directories in any arbitrary sequence you wish. See Section 22 of EDDY.DOC. 3. Option /H has been added (or as some long-time users will realize, reinstated). By default, EDDY does not include files with "hidden" or "system" attributes in the display. Using the attribute filtering mechanism displays ONLY those files. If you want to show all files together, use option /H. 4. When the DOS system files (IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM, or some such name) are included in the display of the root directory, they will be at the top, to emphasize their importance -- i.e., if you mess with them, you probably won't be able to boot your system! 5. Disk-image copying and restoring are both used by pressing [Shift+F5]. If the cursor is on the "Drive" line of the display, disk-image copying is started; if it is on a file, disk-image restoring is used (and the file is tagged "Copy image", rather than "Copy(!)" as previously). Thus, [^m], previously used as the "Mark all" command, is no longer used. If you press it by mistake, it acts just like [Alt+m]: "Jump to first mark". 6. If EDDY is started from a floppy, the necessary overlays to handle UPDATE and LOOK/PATCH operations are pre-loaded automatically, so that the diskette may be changed and that same drive may be used as working or target directory if desired. Previously, you had to use option /3 to do this. 7. You can set the date and time to all zeros (both, not separately). If you do this, the timestamp will not be displayed at all when you use the DOS "DIR" command. Useful to call attention to entries in the "DIR" listing. 8. When you LOOK at a disk, the initial display will be the sector of the current working directory, rather than the boot sector. 9. EDDY attempts to identify "compressed" or "extended" disks that are produced by products such as Stacker (tm) or DoubleDisk (tm). Some of the things (e.g., sector patching, directory moving) you can do with EDDY are unsafe to do with these disks. If EDDY can't automatically determine the disk type, you will be asked before anything potentially unsafe is attempted. 10. In answer to requests from European users, the margins of EDDY.DOC have been changed slightly, to accommodate printing on A4-size paper. Version 7b ========== 1. A number of bugs had crept in over time, having to do with incompat- ibilities between DOS versions. These had made some of EDDY's features (in some cases, ALL of EDDY's features) unusable with versions earlier than DOS 3.2. These bugs have been resolved, and EDDY should again be usable with DOS 2.0 and all later versions. 2. In recognition of the growing number of EDDY users who are not from the USA, EDDY will display file timestamps in the format you choose. If your system is set up (usually via the "COUNTRY=" command in CONFIG.SYS) to use dates of the form "dd/mm/yy" or "yy-mm-dd", rather than the USA-style "mm-dd-yy", EDDY will use that format. 3. EDDY's display has been made more helpful. More of the function key uses are shown on the bottom line, and the area to the right of the files display has some "boxes" showing more key uses; these boxes may also be "clicked" on with a mouse to get the indicated action. 4. Redirection is supported for "Point-n-Shoot" and EDDY.USE commands. 5. The "Exit directory" functionality has been expanded, and renamed as "Directory Recall". As before, [Shift+F10] selects the current working directory as the directory that will become the default when you quit EDDY. To acknowledge the selection, the message "Directory recall set" is displayed. The new capability is that having set directory recall, pressing [Shift+^F10] uses the selected directory as the new working directory. 6. Editing a file's timestamp has no effect on the file's attributes. Previously, timestamp edits turned on the "archive" attribute. 7. When a repeating command such as [^F5], [^F6], etc. is executed, a message is displayed telling how many files have been tagged for the corresponding action. 8. Some error and warning messages have been changed, but also more thoroughly documented (Appendix C of EDDY.DOC). When these messages are displayed, a reference to Appendix C also appears. Version 7a (changes since 6c2) ============================== 1. EDDY's "Disk Jockey" functions (see Section 20 of EDDY.DOC) now work with any size disk (including RAM disks). Earlier versions were restricted to disks of 32 megabytes or less. 2. With the cursor on the '..' entry in the display, and display sequence is... ...not inverted: pressing [home] moves to next higher directory ...inverted: pressing [end] moves to next higher directory just as though you had pressed [F3]. 3. In addition to interrupting repeating commands such as [^f], [^F5], etc., pressing [^c] will also terminate a "where's that file?" scan, as well as the directory scanning process that calculates the net sizes of files involved in an impending update. 4. If there are no changes pending, pressing [Enter] will have the same effect as pressing [F3] if you are positioned on a file, directory or "drive" entry in the display; i.e., you will LOOK at that entry. On other display lines, you'll get the usual "Nothing to update" message. If you don't like this use of [Enter], you may customize EDDY accordingly; see Section 26.3.4 of EDDY.DOC. [Enter] still initiates an UPDATE if changes are pending. 5. When LOOKing at RAM, directory entries found there may be displayed in EDIT-mode ("DIR") format. Just as when LOOKing at a disk, move the directory data to the top of the screen, and press [Alt+d]. 6. Some administrivia: 1) EDDY now (gently) reminds you if you are using an unregistered copy. Upon registering, you will receive the latest version, personally registered to you. 2) After more than two years of significant changes and the ravages of inflation, EDDY's registration fee is increased to $25.00.