Black Box 4

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Black Box 4 / BlackBox.cdr / dosutils / lcd_40a.arj / HISTORY.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1991-08-17 | 20KB | 396 lines

Led's Change Directory (LCD) v4.0 Copyright (c) 1991 by Keith Ledbetter. All rights reserved. Revision History ---------------- v4.0a 8/17/91 o LCD's pop-up selection box is now twice as big as earlier versions. o LCD now has a "speed search" option in the selection screen. Any keypresses will be filtered into this speed-search field, and will immediately filter out non-matching directory names. The speed search does its matching from the START of the directory name by default. You can toggle this on and off by pressing the '*' key. Pressing the '*' key turns on "match anywhere" logic. For example, if you have directories named UTILS and BUTTONS, a speed search entry of "ut" would only show the UTILS directory. Pressing "*" would show both the UTILS and the BUTTONS directories. o There is now Microsoft-compatible mouse support in the pop-up selection box. You must specify the "/M" parameter AT THE END of the command line for mouse support to be turned on. You must also have loaded your mouse driver before invoking LCD. If you are currently ALIASing CD with either 4DOS or DOS 5's DOSKEY, just do this: 4DOS: alias cd `lcd %1 /M` DOSKEY: doskey cd=lcd $1 /M When mouse support is active, the following screen areas are "hot areas": ┌─ aborts the program (or right mouse button) │ │ ┌─ clicking on the top bar "pages up" │ │ ╒═[■]══════════════════╡ ...... .... ..... ╞╤═╕ clicking on a │ ............... │^│- line up name changes ─┼── ........... │░│ to that dir │ ................... │░│ │ │v│- line down ├───────────────────────────────────────────┴─┤ │ ......│. .... .. . . . . . .... ... .... │ ├─────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │ ......│. .... .. . . . . . .... ... .... │ ╘═════════╪═══════════════════════════════════╛ │ └─ clicking on the this bar "pages down" o LCD can now rename subdirectories and update the database immediately. This is done with the "LCD REN" command. You can not specify a path name in the new filename. For example, if you're not in the current directory for the rename, don't do this: LCD ren c:\path\olddir c:\path\newdir instead, simply do: LCD ren c:\path\olddir newdir For those of you doing aliases, you can do: 4DOS: alias rendir `LCD REN %1 %2` DOSKEY: doskey rendir=LCD REN $1 $2 o LCD now sees hidden directories when doing a scan. o You can now do "LCD ..." as a shortcut to go up two directories, or "LCD ...." to go up three directories. o An even easier shortcut is the "-n" parameter, which moves you up "n" directory levels. For example, if you are currently in the C:\PCPLUS\DOWNLOAD\NEW\TEMP directory, "LCD -3" would move you to the C:\PCPLUS dir. o The LCD_COLORS environment variable can now either be specified by NUMBER or by NAME. For example, you can now say SET LCD_COLORS=blue white yellow lightgray blue red To get a complete listing of the available color names, just do an "LCD /?" command. o Two new "errorlevel" conditions: 10 : unable to rename the specified directory. 11 : a bad parameter was specified. v3.1a 5/05/91 o Sorry for the back-to-back releases, but 43 and 50 line modes on EGA/VGA monitors was something that I'd promised for release in v3.0a. Unfortunately, it completely slipped my mind. Of course, only a few hours after 3.0's release, quite a few people reminded me of my intentions. This version will actually support any number of lines as long as the BIOS reports it correctly. v3.0a 5/03/91 o From an operational point of view, it will look to you like LCD has changed very little. In fact, the entire program has been totally rewritten from the ground up. This was facilitated by one problem -- people with large drives (normally on Networks) couldn't scan all of their drives because earlier versions of LCD would allow only a 22K database size. In normal use, this would usually average out to around a maximum of 1,100 directory entries that could be stored in the database. I say "usually" because the way the old (v2.x) LCD stored its database was variable-length. Version 3.x of LCD now uses a totally different, fixed-entry-size file format that can store up to 4,000 directory entries in the database. o Because of the new database format, you must re-scan after installing v3.0a. o Since LCD is being used by many people as a total replacement for DOS's CD, RD, and MD commands (through aliasing), I changed the program to simply return the current path name if you invoke LCD with no command line parameters (just like DOS's CD command does). If you want to see the help screen, you must explicitly do an "LCD /?" (or "LCD /HELP") command. o Because of the new database format, LCD can no longer store a child directory in the database if its parent isn't there. In other words, if you do this (with no 'aliases' on MD): MD C:\Junk LCD md C:\Junk\Junk2 LCD will create the directory "Junk2", but it will tell you that it couldn't store the name in the database because its parent wasn't found. o If you have more than 4,000 directories, LCD will still abort as always, but it WILL save the directory database up to that point (ie: your first 4000 dirs). o The LCD environment variable now specifies the entire filename of where you want the index to be. If you don't have an LCD environment variable, the default is "C:\LCD.IDX" as always. But, if you want to move it, you can do: SET LCD=D:\Utils\SubDirs.Idx (or whatever) o I have "reversed" the /SCAN logic so that there are now two switches: /SCAN - does a normal scan, INCLUDING directories with extensions /QSCAN - does a v2.x-type scan, which ignores directories with extensions I made this change because about 95% of my tech support calls on LCD are this: "it's not finding my directories with extensions on them!" (about 95% of my SST calls are for the same reason). o You can now change the colors of the pop-up display box. You do this by setting an environment variable named "LCD_COLORS". Its format: Set LCD_Colors = background foreground highlight Selection_Bar_Background Selection_Bar_Foreground Thumbtack_color (all on one line, of course). The colors are specified by number, where the colors are: 0 BLACK 8 DARKGRAY 1 BLUE 9 LIGHTBLUE 2 GREEN 10 LIGHTGREEN 3 CYAN 11 LIGHTCYAN 4 RED 12 LIGHTRED 5 MAGENTA 13 LIGHTMAGENTA 6 BROWN 14 YELLOW 7 LIGHTGRAY 15 WHITE As an example: Set LCD_Colors = 7 0 14 1 15 3 would give you a LIGHTGRAY box, with BLACK text, YELLOW highlighting, BLUE selection bar with WHITE text, and a CYAN thumbtack (on the scroll bar). o If you use LCD on a monochrome system, just do this: Set LCD_Colors = Mono and LCD will select a predefined monochrome color set. o You can now abort the /SCAN process with the ESCape key. o Two new "errorlevel" conditions: 8 : there wasn't enough memory to allocate for the directory database. 9 : either the "LCD" or "LCD_COLORS" environment variable is incorrectly formatted. v2.1 3/07/91 o LCD now returns more detailed ERRORLEVEL conditions, which had been asked for by quite a few users who invoke LCD from batch files. The errorlevels are as follows: 0 : LCD was successful 1 : LCD was successful; ignoring floppy drive 2 : unable to change to the drive or directory 3 : drive scan failed 4 : database error (can't read/write/create) 5 : can't create/remove specified directory 6 : no command line parameters were specified 7 : user aborted LCD with the ESC key There is a batch file included (LCDTEST.BAT) that shows how you can use these values in your batch files. v2.0 12/01/90 o Simply an oversight: v1.4 would update the directory database if you used LCD to create a directory on drive A: or B:. LCD no longer updates the directory database if you use it to make or remove a directory on these drives (this was probably only apparent to those of us who "alias" MD and RD to use LCD.EXE). v1.5 - v1.9 o These version numbers were skipped. v1.4 11/24/90 o LCD can now be used as a TOTAL replacement for DOS's "cd", "rd", and "md" commands. LCD will now try to immediately change to the directory name that you specify; if that fails, only then will it go to the directory database to search for fuzzy matches. In other words, if you have the following two directories somewhere: C:\TELIX\DOWNLOAD C:\PROCOMM\DOWNLOAD and you are currently in the C:\PROCOMM directory, then "LCD download" will change you to the \PROCOMM\DOWNLOAD directory without invoking the dialog box. o LCD can now create and delete directories itself, with immediate updating of the directory database at the same time. The syntax is: LCD md directory_name LCD rd directory_name These commands are most useful when used with an aliasing shell like CED or 4DOS. Since I use 4DOS, I have aliases set up as follows: alias cd `lcd %1` alias md `lcd md %1` alias rd `lcd rd %1` o You can now set an environment variable named LCD to the drive that you'd like your LCD.IDX file stored on (for example, SET LCD=D tells LCD to maintain your database in the file D:\LCD.IDX). If there is no LCD environment variable, the file will be kept on drive C: just like before. o When in the scrollable dialog box, you now have use of the full movement keys (PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, arrow keys). You can also press C through Z to immediately go to that drive's directories. This is most useful when doing "LCD *" to see all names in the database. v1.3 10/15/90 o Fixed a bug where LCD would get confused if you had a one-letter directory name, and that letter also occurred in its parent directory (ie: "c:\aRc\R"). o Of course, the above change can be a problem if (a) you have a one-character directory name, as in R, and you also have a lot of other directories that begin with R. So, I have changed LCD so that it understands an asterisk ('*') as a wildcard character. Some examples are the easiest way to explain: LCD r* : find all paths that BEGIN with the letter 'r'. LCD *on : find all paths that have the word "on" in them. LCD * : show me all paths in the database. o A few people wanted to be able to change to either (a) the parent directory, or (b) the root directory while still using LCD. LCD will now allow this, so you can do: LCD .. ;go up one level LCD \ ;go to the root. v1.2 10/11/90 o A lot of people (in fact, everyone who has contacted me) have suggested that LCD should give the highest priority to the first positions of the pathname specified. In other words, if you have the following two paths on your hard drive: c:\testing\programs c:\atest\data then "LCD TEST" should change to the \testing\ directory immediately. v1.2 now does this. o Overall, the matching logic in v1.2 has been greatly improved. It now does a much better job of figuring out what you really wanted it to do. But, it will probably help if you know exactly how LCD does it's searching. In a nutshell, here is what LCD does: 1. Look for an EXACT match on the directory name specified. If more than one found, display the dialog box. If none found, go to step 2. 2. Look for a "fuzzy" match on the name. By LCD's standards, a fuzzy match is the name you specified followed by any extra data. For example, if you specify "LCD data", then all of the following would match: c:\data1 c:\database f:\dataset If more than one match found, display the dialog box. If none found, go to step 3. 3. At this point, LCD just looks for the partial string anywhere in a path name, preceeded or followed by any characters. o Since so very few people use extensions on their directory names, I changed the logic to once again use "*." for directory searches instead of "*.*". This speeds the /SCAN function up by about 50%. If you have directory names with extensions on them, then you must use the /ESCAN switch instead of /SCAN. Operation is the same, except that LCD will then use the slower scanning method. v1.1 10/04/90 o Since the .IDX file is stored a little differently, you MUST do a /SCAN before using LCD v1.1 (this is for those of you currently using v1.0). o LCD is now much smarter on "fuzzy" directory names. For example, "lcd pcp" will now change you to your "d:\pcplus" directory always, even if you have "pcplus\downloads" and "pcplus\uploads", etc. o When LCD can't figure out which directory you really want, it will now pop up a scrollable dialog box with all of the matches found in it. You simply move the highlight bar to the directory that you want, and then press <Enter>. A lot of people requested something like this, and I wasn't sure how I was going to like it at first. But, after playing with it for a couple of days, I think it was a good idea. It's much more logical than LCD trying to "cycle" through all of the matches one invocation at a time. o A few people also complained about LCD not seeing directories that have an extension on them (ie: MYDATA.DIR). I still can't sneak by anybody on this issue! So, LCD v1.1 now sees directories with extensions; you will notice that the /SCAN function takes around twice as long to run now.