Fresh Fish 4/FreshFish_May-June1994.bin/tools/kingfisher/readme

Text File | 1994-04-16 | 8KB | 198 lines

Editor's Note:

This version of KingFisher is provided in the hope that you may find it
useful, however because it is a beta test version, and because there was no
significant time for testing (it was literally included on the CD-ROM on
the same day the ISO-9660 master tape was made), it is almost certain that
by the time you see this CD-ROM, many improvements will have been made.

I STRONGLY urge you to register with Udo for the latest supported version.
Not only will you get an improved version of KingFisher and the
accompanying databases, but you will get many other benefits as well.

I would like to express my deep appreciation to Udo for his work on writing
the specification for the "product info" files and for this rewrite of
KingFisher.  Please help support this work by registering KingFisher.

-Fred Fish
 16-Apr-94

===========================================================================

This is the "BETA 9" release of KingFisher 2.0.  This KingFisher is
provided to you without any warrantees, either expressed or implied.  This
software is a preliminary release of a package under development and may
exhibit erroneous behavior, even result in crashes.  It is not a finished
product by any means.

For more detailed information on the program, please read the documentation
in the KingFisher.DOC file.

KingFisher 2.0 is lacking the following features of Release 1:

  · AmigaGuide® Help,
  · Skipping forward/backward by version and disk number,
  · Printing and exporting data,
  · Add Fish that recognizes the "original" listing format,
  · Deleting fish from the database,
  · Reindexing the database,
  · Iconifying,
  · Custom screen support.

I hope that for the moment you can live without these features.  Release
2.0 offers a lot, however, that Release 1 did not:



FEATURES OF RELEASE 2.0

  · Connects to a currently running KingFisher 2.0 Database Server,

  · Starts up the KingFisher 2.0 Database Server if not currently running;
    the KFServer must reside in the same directory as KingFisher 2.0 for
    this feature to be functional.  Alternatively, the tooltype or config
    entry "SERVERNAME=volume:path/KFServer" may specify an alternate path
    AND filename for the KingFisher 2.0 Database Server.

  · Allows selecting a database other than the default database,

  · Resizable GadTools interface, sensitive to proportional fonts, even
    with a word-wrapping and proportional font sensitive ListView,

  · Display format is sensitive to database contents and will omit the
    display of fields that do not exist (or are empty,)

  · Forward and backward motion through the database, one fish at a time,

  · Offers logical search expressions of the form
                   fieldname comparison constantvalue
    combined with boolean operators & (AND), | (OR), and ^ (XOR), as well
    as ! or ~ (NOT) for negating an expression.  Expressions can be grouped
    into more complex ones with the use of parentheses.  Errors in the
    expression are diagnosed with a small set of error messages.
         Comparison operators are the common < <= > >= = (==) and != (<>)
    In addition, the $ is also used to be read as "contains," i.e.
                   name$kingfisher
    means "field name contains the string 'kingfisher'."  Constant values
    must be quoted with "" or '' if they contain any special symbol such as
    & | ^ a blank space or closing parenthesis.

  · A meta-field '*' may be used to signify ALL fields.  Thus, the
    expression "*$fish" searches for the substring "fish" in all fields.
    This is what KingFisher Release 1 did with the expression "fish"; old
    expressions may thus be translated by preceding all keywords with the
    characters "*$" to denote substring searches in all fields.

    This has not been found to be functional as of the BETA 6 release
    and not been sufficiently tested as of BETA 9; my apologies!

  · Scans a single file and allows addition of its contents to the current
    database,

  · Handles both a KingFisher Release 1 and the new Release 2 database
    format with equal grace.  KingFisher Release 1 index files will be
    converted to Release 2 format index files; this causes the files to be
    unusable with KingFisher Release 1; use backup copies of the index file
    to be able to go back to the old release.


BUGS

  · Loses about 4272 bytes of memory each time invoked,

  · Sometimes crashes with a privilige violation (8000 0008) gury; This one
    hasn't bitten me in a while, but I haven't found a spot in the code
    which was definitely responsible for the problem, so I suspect it's
    only gone into hiding for the moment.

  · Is not always graceful or overly informative when the server is not
    responsive, or when some other problem exists with the connection to
    the server; I hope to clean that up a bit and make things more
    explicit,


VERY NEAR FUTURE (By second week? of April 1994)

  · Recursively scanning a directory tree for .Product-Info, Product-Info,
    or #?.pi files to be added to database; the current version of this
    command is not functional; it stops after the first file,

  · Following existing version links (currently only part of KingFisher
    Release 1 indexed databases),

  · Skipping forward and backward to disk boundaries (currently implemented
    only as part of KingFisher Release 1 indexed databases),


NEAR FUTURE (Most likely late April or May)

  · Quick Index based on a field in the database (usually the name) which
    is used automatically if a search involves only a field so indexed,

  · Saving a history of search expressions to take the place of and expand
    upon the 6 fields that KingFisher Release 1 used; these will be
    selectable from a ListView,

  · Saving current positions in each used database so that skipping back
    and forth between databases does no reset to the first fish,

  · Saving position and size of (all?) windows that KingFisher opens,

  · Modifying and examining flags associated with each fish,

  · Assigning and modifying disk numbers to ranges of fish,

  · Printing and Exporting

  · User-defined display, print, and export formatting with the same power
    as the built-in contents senstive display,

  · Full localization,


FURTHER FUTURE (Maybe implemented during the Summer 94)

  · Defining new databases interactively (i.e. where files are, how they
    are split up, index file names, etc)

  · Automatic printing, exporting, assigning of new flags, etc during a
    search,

  · Clipboard support,

  · Searching within a range of fish,

  · Reindexing a database (rebuilding a damaged index,)

  · Status display (i.e. similar to what "KFSERVER STATUS" prints out,)

  · AmigaGuide® Help just as in KingFisher Release 1,

  · Viewing search results as if they were a subset of the full database,
    rather than viewing matches as they occur and proceeding from there
    (which is how KingFisher Release 1 does it,)

  · Starting a second KingFisher client from with KingFisher to allow easy
    background searches or simultaneous, side-by-side access to multiple
    databases,

  · Sensitivity to display aspect ratio.  At this time, KingFisher 2.0 uses
    a 1:1 aspect ratio for its gadgets; it will become sensitive to this in
    the future and adopt a more pleasing imagery for older systems,

  · Delete fish from the database that have a DELETE flag set,

  · Use of a custom screen instead of only Public (or Workbench) screens,

  · Iconification to the Workbench,

  · Maintain multiple Search Sets (even saved on disk) to which one can
    return at any time,

  · User-selectable display font for the interface, rather than the use of
    the default system font.


 ._.  Udo Schuermann
 ( )  [e-mail]