You may use and distribute Unity at no charge, but you may not sell it, or
collect money for its distribution (normal disk duplication fees excepted).
Anyone wishing to distribute Unity along with any commercial or shareware
software package may do so only with my express written consent.
Purpose
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I constantly download files at school from various bulletin boards as well as Stanford University over the VAX. As all of you who also download know, programs usually come in multiple parts which must be put together later. When a program comes in 5,6, or even 3 separate 30K text documents, it is a royal pain to have to use a text editor to bring them together in one file. Unity alleviates this troublesome task. In other words, Unity is a text file concatenator.
Description
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Unity reads text files that you choose and puts them all into one file, also of your choosing. It puts writes them in the same order that you choose them. Unity allocates itself a chunk of your memory for a buffer. Under Multifinder, this chunk is 30K. If you aren't under Multifinder, the program allocates the largest possible chunk of your free memory that it can get its hands on. To do this under Multifinder requires some special programming, so i haven't gotten around to it (see Future changes).
Using Unity
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All you have to do is choose Unite from the File menu to start concatenating files. The first thing Unity wants is for you to give it a main file to put everything else into. In this task you have two choices. You can choose one of the files in the dialog box that already exists on your disk, or you can click the New button to create a new file. BE WARNED: if you don't use a new file, then all the files you unite will be put into the original first file. This means that if anything goes wrong, you won't have a copy of that first file anymore; acutally you will have a copy, but it will contain other files. However, you can use the Undo button to correct your mistakes. I advise using the New feature, unless you have a backup of the files you are uniting.
If you are short of disk space, then you can choose the 'Delete as you go' option to erase files after they have be added to the main file. However, if you mess up in the order, not even the Undo feature will help you, because after you Undo, the part you need will still have been erased!
The 'Dont show files after use' feature will prevent files from showing up in the dialog box after you have added them to the main file. That way, you don't have to wade through files you've already added to find the next piece. Unity will ALWAYS prevent the main file from showing up, whether or not this option is selected.
Future Changes
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The Future holds many possibilites for Unity. I am planning on making it so that Unity can unite MacWrite, WriteNow, and MacPaint files. Yes, I did say MacPaint files! You could create a background and a foreground file and then put them together with Unity. But you say you can do that will the Clipboard. Right, but Unity will, hopefully, let you create strange affects with features like XOR, XAND, and others as you unite. This means neat pictures.
Very soon, Unity will allocate a non-static buffer under multifinder. I plan to do this using the temporary memory allocation under Multifinder. However, I first need to get the Multifinder Development Package to understand how to do this and right now I don't have the money. (If i got some shareware fees....)
The big problem is getting the time to do the changes; college students don't have much free time. Besides, I always have about 3 or 4 projects that i am working on at a given time. This means that I'd like to do these additions, but I'm not making any promises.
Problems & Suggestions
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This program is far from perfect, however it works fine. I have used it extensively in my downloading and have not run into any problems yet. For most errors that can occur, Unity will bring up a dialog telling you what went wrong. However, there are some instances where Unity may bring up a dialog saying Unknown Error and telling you a number. If this happens to you, I would be very appreciative if you could write to me telling me the number and the surrounding circumstances so that I may improve the program. I am also always interested in hearing suggestions and bug reports.
I can be reached at:
P.O. Box 7467 Clemson, SC 29632
Internet: mikeoro@prism.clemson.edu
Internet: mikeoro@hubcap.clemson.edu
Internet: morourk@hubcap.clemson.edu
AppleLink: ST0274
And, of course the pitch... This is a SHAREWARE program. I am a poor starving college student and my Mac could also use another Meg of memory (and an accelerator board, and an external full-page monitore, and.... ), so please send the tiny amount of $5 for registration (or any amount you deem right). Hey, if nothing else send me a letter telling me that you liked the program, but are poor so I at least know I wrote something worthwile. And for that registration fee you will also get notification of updates. You will have to send a disk to get them, but other than that they will be free.
Changes since older versions
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2.1
includes error checking facilities far exceeding version 1.0
3.0
uses menu bars rather than just a dialog box. Full error checking.
3.1
Prevents extra use of first file. Allows transferring. Error checking refined. Fixed bug that caused an error when creating a new file with same name as an existing file. Added a 'Delete as you Go' option to allow concatenated files to be erased after their use.
3.1.1
Added 'Dont show files after use' option. Fixed buffer allocation bug that bombed program on MacIIcx. Added an Undo button so errors can be fixed.
Other programs by Micro F/X
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FastFormat 800 - a mass initialization program for double sided drives
Application Font CDEV - lets you change the default application font
Shout! - a appletalk application for broadcasting messages
Coming attractions by Micro F/X include
---------------------------------------
An appletalk communications package
(beta versions to be released in November1989)
An appletalk game (to be released in Fall 1989)
An appletalk init/program combination for computer labs
This will allow shutdown of all computers, changing all times/date, posting of messages, etc.
