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BRANCH.HLP
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1990-02-19
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BRANCH Version 0.983545
BRANCH is the ultimate in hard disk directory
management currently available in the Public Domain
Libaries. This program was inspired by the high cost
of commercial software. Of course, this is an
Australian produced computer software. It is a Public
Domain software program, and normal Public Domain
rules apply. The programmer would like to thank all
involved in this project.
Most functions of the program is fairly self-
explanatory. This help screen is available to provide
information and instructions regrading the use of
BRANCH.
Basics of using BRANCH
A pull-down menu has been is use in BRANCH to make it
easy to operate. Most of the functions in BRANCH are
accessible from the pull-down menu. To activate a
pull-down menu, press the first letter of the item on
the top menu bar. Use the cursor keys to move about in
the menu area.
Function Keys
F2 Change Drive, it only works when viewing the
directory tree.
F3 Execute a single line of DOS command.
F8 Configure BRANCH to suit your needs. Allows you
to select you favourite text-editor, and many
other available options .
F9 Switches between 43/50 lines and 25 lines mode
if you are using a EGA/VGA display.
F10 Allow for temporary exit to DOS by executing a
DOS shell, type `exit' to return to BRANCH
* The Directory Tree
When look at the directory tree structure of you
drive, use the cursor keys to move up and down the
tree. To Enter a directory, just position the cursor
on that directory and press <ENTER>.
There also several functions associated with
directories available from the 'Dir' Menu. You can
also logged by to another drive by choosing 'Log Disk'
from the Menu.
The File Display
This display the files in the directory. When looking
at the files, use the cursor keys to move around in
the file area. The file are display just like they are
when you use 'DIR' from DOS. In addition, the file
attribue is also shown, so are all hidden files.
To select (tag) a file, press the space bar. Another
way would be to go to the TAG menu. Selected files
are differentiated by a pointer on the left of the
filename. The file(s) will still be tagged even if you
accidentally (or intentionally) go to the the tree
diagram.
There are 3 ways to view a file, as a text file, a hex
dump, as *.GIF graphics file or as a *.LZH archive
file.
To view a GIF file, an external GIF viewer is needed.
Place the GIF viewer in anywhere on your hard drive
and use the Configure option to enter the full path
name of your chosen GIF viewer. When the cursor is at
a GIF file, simply press ENTER to see the file.
If the cursor is position on a LZH file. Its contents
will be shown. Refer to the Archiving Section for more
information.
* Changing File Attribute
To change the file attributes of a single file or a
group of files, tag them first and then choose Change
Attrib from the File menu.
Press the keys H,S,R,A to toggle a particular
attribute on or off. Pressing `Enter' will change the
attribute of all the tagged files. Press `ESC' to
abort.
* View File
To view a file, move the cursor to that file and then
choose View File from the File Menu. There are two
ways of viewing a file, as a binary file or a text
file. BRANCH automatically attemps to check if a file
is a text file or a binary file and invoked the
corresponding viewer.
* Viewing Binary File
A hex-editor is also included. Use the cursor keys to
move the cursor to the required position. Typing
anything on the keyboard will replace the character
under the cursor. Items that have been modified will
be shown in a different colour.
Key Effects
----------------------------------------------------------
ESC Quit viewing.
TAB switches you between HEX and ASCII mode.
F2 brings you to the block number you specify.
F3 lets you find a single or group of characters,
starting from the cursor and working downwards.
Only available for the characters on the
keyboard.
F4 searches for the next string of text as
specified in F3. Saves you typing it in again.
F5 writes current block to disk. If you wish to
abort, get out by ESCaping before you press F5.
This will revert the block to its last save.
F6 lets you switch to viewing a text file, much
like a word processor.
F8 Lets you highlight a particular HEX/ASCII byte
without doing anything to it.
PgUp/PgDn Move the next/previous block.
* Viewing Text File
When viewing a text file, use the Up-arrow/Dn-Arrow to
scroll through the file. The moving scroll bar at the
right hand side of the screen shows you roughly which
part of the file you're in.
* Renaming File
Use the function to rename files. The files must be
tagged first before they can be renamed.
eg. renaming *aaa.* to *bbb.*
will rename all files with names ending with
aaa to files with names ending with bbb
regardless.
renaming *.aaa to *.bbb
will rename all files with extension aaa to
file with extension bbb.
* Copying Files
This function allows copying of files from one
directory to another. When copying files to floppy, if
the floppy disk is full, BRANCH will prompt for the
next disk.
Using Copy:
After tagging files to be copied, chose this
option. It will prompt for the drive and path to
be copied to. If the subdirectory is not there,
it will create whatever is missing from the path
automatically and then copy the tagged files over.
Using Xcopy:
Same as above but also copies the directory
structrue of source disk. Can only xcopy to a
different drive.
* Backup Tag Directories
Copy all the files in the tagged directories to
another drive while maintaining the directory
structure. Only tagged directories can be backup.
When the target floppy disk is full, please insert
next disk. If the target hard disk is full, please get
a bigger one.
* Changing Drive
To change drive, select Change Drive from the Log Disk
Menu or press the F2 key.
To change from the current drive to a new one. If it
is a floppy drive, BRANCH will automatically relog it
every time it changes into the drive. If it is a hard
disk, the old drive's directory structure if shown if
it has already been logged, otherwise it will log it
and store the information for later use.
If you use Relog Drive, the drive will be re-read
regardless. This is useful in the directory tree
represented a drive is out-dated. Possibly cause by
the creation/removal of directories when you shell to
DOS or run another program from within BRANCH.
Two other keys + and - can also be use to change
drive. Pressing '+' simply go the the next drive while
'-' select the previous drive.
Change drive only works when in the directory tree
area. Does not work when looking at files.
Run Another Program / Shelling to DOS
To run a file from inside BRANCH, Move the cursor to
the desired file and activate this function. You will
be asked to enter the parameters for the program.
After the program has finished, it will bring you back
to where you left off. BRANCH will still reserve about
67K of memory when runing another program. If there
isn't enough memory for your program, then exit branch
first.
To shell to DOS, press F10. Similar to executing
another program, some memory will be reserved by
BRANCH. When in DOS, type "EXIT" to get back to
BRANCH. To execute only a single DOS command, use F3
(DOS command) instead.
* File Archiving
A file archiving utility has been provided by Branch,
using LZSS and Adaptive Huffman Coding technique, the
same as the file format for Lharc (*.LZH files).
Special thanks goes to Haruhiko Okumura and Haruyasu
Yoshizaki for their work on Lharc. BRANCH always
compress files to smaller or equal size compare to
Lharc 1.13. The compression routine in BRANCH is
optimised to always produce the smallest possible
file using the LZSS and Adaptive Huffman Coding.
When compression binary files and graphics file
(*.PIC, *.MAC), using BRANCH usually results in
smaller file than using PKZIP 1.01. Text files are
usually better handled by PKZIP.
* Pack File
First, tag the files you want to be compressed, then
select Pack-File form the File menu. Enter the name
of the archive file, eg. MYDATA.LZH. All tagged
files will be compressed into the file MYDATA.LZH.
This is the same as the 'a' option in Lharc.
* Unpack File
Use this option to expand the archive file to their
orginal files. Same as the 'e' option in Lharc.
* Viewing LZH file
This is same as the 'v' option in Lharc. First move
the cursor to the specific LZH file and press
<ENTER>, the archived file information will be
shown.
* Functions available from the Dir Menu.
Backup Directory:
Explained elsewhere.
Create Directory:
To create a new (sub)directory, use the cursor
keys to highlight the (sub)directory you want
the new (sub)directory to be linked to, activate
this command and type in the new
(sub)directory's name. Unlike the MKDIR/MD
command in DOS, you can entered any path name to
be created.
Example: "C:\AAA\BBB\CCC\DDD\EEE"
"..\CCC\GGG\LLL"
Erase Directory:
erases a directory only if it is empty.
Hide/Unhide Directory:
allows the user to hide or unhide a directory.
When a directory is hidden it doesn't show up
using the `DIR' command from DOS.
Rename Directory:
Change the name of a directory.
Relog Directory:
Relogs the directory at the cursor only.
Functions available from File Menu. These functions
mainly relate to file operations.
Copy: Explained elsewhere.
Erase: Deletes all tagged files.
Change Attributes: Explained elsewhere.
View: Explained elsewhere.
Rename: Explained elsewhere.
Run: Explained elsewhere.
Xcopy: Copies file, but keeps directory structure
as well. Can only be copied to a different
drive.
Text Editor: execute an external editor the edit
the file at the cursor. use F8 (Configure) to
choose you own external editor.
Pack: Explained elsewhere
Unpack: Explained elsewhere
Sorting Files
The files being displayed can be sorted in several
different ways.
Extension: sorts by extension.
Date/Time: sorts by date and time.
Name: sorts by filename.
Size: sorts by size.
Un-sort: restore to orginal order
Reverse: re-sorts the file in reverse order.
Tagging Files or Directories
SPACE-BAR:
Tags the file or directory at the cursor bar and
advance the cursor to the next item.
Global: Tags all files in directory.
Clear: Untags all tagged files.
Invert: Tagged files become untagged and vise
versa.
Tag Selected:
Tags files with similar names or extensions.
eg. using `*.EXE' will tag all files with
extensiion `EXE'.
Untag Selected:
Same as above but untages the matching files.
Configure BRANCH
There are several options that can be configure by the
user. Use the up/down cursor keys to move the "-->"
to the item you want to configure and press "ENTER".
Change Colours
Since everyone has different preference for screen
colours, you can choose you own colour combinations.
use the 4 cursor keys to change to a different colour,
and the PgUp/PgDn keys to select colours for dirrerent
fields.
Change Colour Palette
This is available in the presence of EGA/VGA display.
There's a choice of 16 colours out of a possible 64
colours. Use the Up/Down cursor to move to the
particular you wish to modify, then use the PgDn/PgUp
keys to change the palette colour. If you do modify
the colour palette, BRANCH will revert to the original
default palette when you run another program, shell to
DOS or exit from BRANCH.
External Editors
Press "Enter" and type in the path name of you
favourite text editor.
External Gif Viewer
Choose your GIF viewer to view GIF files from within
BRANCH.
Screen Blanker
Use this option if you want BRANCH to black out the
screen when there's no keyboard activity for a
specified duration. Enter the number of seconds you
want to wait before the screen blanks out. A value of
"0" indicates no screen blanker. Note: if you set the
black colour to some other colour (using change
palette) then the screen will not be black when
blanked.
Data Entries
Selet the amount of memory BRANCH will use to store
directory/file entries. Press Enter to type in a
value between 300 and 2700. The new value you
specified for the data entries will take effect the
next time you run BRANCH. Note that you must allocate
at least more entries than the maxinum number of
directories in a drive plus the maxinum number of
files in one directories.
When you've finished the modifications, press ESC.
Technical Information
This program is the result of weeks of hard work by
James Chao. The entire program is written in Borland's
Turbo Pascal Version 5.5 (with OOPS), consisting more
than 8000 lines of PASCAL code. The archiving routine
is written in 8086 assembley (about 1000 lines), and
compiled using Borland's Turbo Assembler version 1.0.
The aim of of BRANCH is to make it easy to use,
therefore the entire program occupies only a single
file BRANCH.EXE. The same cannot be said for many
other MS-DOS programs which are spread over several
files. This Help screen is always on hand when
pressing F1.
Branch can only be run from a hard disk. It uses an
overlay manager to reduce memory overhead. When you
shell to DOS or run another program, BRANCH still
occupies some memory (depending on the number of data
entries you choose). BRANCH is not a TSR program,
Like many other Hard Disk Utilities, a limit exists on
the size of the data. A data entry can be either a
file entry or a directory entry. Branch only works if
the total number of directory on a drive plus the
number of files in you biggest directory (the one with
the most files) is less than the number of data
entries specified in the Configure option.
As long as the above condition is fulfilled branch
will work, even if you have 10000000 files on your
disk. If you enter a directory, all the files entry
are read into memory. A LSU (least recently use)
algorithm is used to decide which files entry should
be left in memory if you have more than 600 files. If
you have more than 600 files in one of you directory,
then you have to start removeing them or move some of
them to another directory.
Your Wish Lists
Since Branch is a public domain program, please DO
sent in your wish list for additional features you
wanted in BRANCH. If you discovered any bugs or
problem, please sent a message to James Chao.
Your help and support will be very much appreciated.
The programmer can be contacted via:
James Chao
P.O. Box 3201
Parramatta
NSW 2150
Australia
<< *** End of Help Screen *** >>