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GFile 2.1 Tech Notes
=====================
Note - If you have not read the file README.1ST, please do so now. It
contains particular license terms and warranty information to which
you are implicitly agreeing by using this program.
Revision History
========================================
Revision 1.0 3/14/92 Original program completed, written in Visual Basic
Revision 1.1 3/29/92 Fixed several bugs.
Added View/Small and Options menu
Made error handling more robust
Revision 1.2 4/5/92 Fixed more bugs.
Added Disk Info screens
Changed order of selecting default destination
for Copy/Move.
Revision 1.3 4/11/92 Fixed bugs.
Added the ability to save configuration between
subsequent executions.
Revision 1.4 4/19/92 Changed 'Selected File' listing to give date/time
and attributes along with filename and length.
Added 'About...' item to menu.
Extended the configuation save/load to include the
drives/directories being displayed, the working
directory, and the location of GFile on the screen.
Revision 1.5 5/3/92 Completely rewrote the panel display, hilighting and
directory selection logic to make it more 'visually
intuitive' - incorporating the idea of an 'active
pane' and a 'destination pane' similar to many DOS
file manipulation utilities.
Fixed several minor bugs.
Cleaned up the Tab Groups.
Enhanced performance of the File Info panels.
Decided GFile had progressed as far as it could
using 'Out Of The Box' Visual Basic. Considered
writing custom controls in C, decided it would be
be better in the long run to re-write the entire
program in C. Began development of Revision 2.0.
Revision 2.0 2/25/93 Released GFile 2.0
Added Program Groups
Enhanced command line
Added serialized printing/execution
Added icons to Program Item list box.
Many additional small enhancements.
Revision 2.0A 3/12/93 Released GFile 2.0A.
Corrected several bugs that appeared after 2.0 release
Revision 2.1 11/1/93 Released GFile 2.1
Resizable main window
Multiple, resizable panels
Recursive (tree) copy/move/delete
User configurable button bars
Enhanced dialogs - browse and options
Enhanced help - graphical hotspots, popups, more text
Ported code to C++, cleaned up code
Notes
=====
Although GFile directly reads the group files to implement the Program Item
lists, GFile uses DDE (program to program communication) messages with
Program manager to make changes in group files. I chose to do it this way
for a couple of reasons:
1. Safety. If Microsoft were to change the format of group files
after 3.1, for example, the worst thing that would
happen to GFile is that it wouldn't run. In particular, it would
not write incorrectly formatted group files, since it is Program
Manager that is actually writing the files.
2. Efficiency. Although the code to directly manipulate the group
files would be faster than communicating with Program Manager,
it would certainly also be much much bigger than the
communicating code. Although I'm sure there are people who create
dozens of program items a day - they are not the norm. Most of
us would rather not waste the disk space re-inventing the wheel -
even if it does spin a little bit faster.
The main result of this is that when creating, destroying, or changing
program items, you will see Program Manager come into existence as an icon
(if it is not already running), and then go away again upon completion. If
Program Manager is already running, and is not iconized, it will hide
while the operation is taking place (to prevent unnecessary screen painting
activity), and then re-appear upon completion.
You will notice that when a DOS Application is minimized (iconized) the icon
that is displayed is the standard blue DOS Icon (actually the icon for the
winoldap program that controls the DOS Application) rather than the icon
associated with the Program Item. Microsoft has not documented any method
to prevent this behavior, and I've yet to discover/figure out the undocumented
method Microsoft uses in Program Manager.
GFile Hall of Fame
==================
Thanks to the following folks for their help in designing, testing, distributing, and
improving GFile
Jack Cotterman
John Gareri
Tim Gleason
Randy("I've found a GBug") Hoch
Tim Wallace