D'Compress For Windows Version 1.01 Release Notes June 17, 1992 ======================= ************************************************************************* MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS FILE! * It covers important information not contained in the documentation. * * It may save you several hours of frustration! * ************************************************************************* Archive File Utilities ---------------------- D'Compress has been changed to look for the PKZIP, PKUNZIP, PKZIPFIX, and ZIP2EXE programs in the directory where D'Compress is located. In addition, the ARC-E program and the LHArc program files must also be located in the same directory as D'Compress. The install program will set this up for you by default. If you wish to use a version of these programs other than the ones supplied with D'Compress, you must copy them into the directory where your D'Compress files are located. Font Selection -------------- D'Compress supports all of the fonts available with Windows 3.0 and 3.1, but, you may have to adjust the point size for maximum readability. To choose a font select the defaults menu selection and pick the fonts item. NOTE: If you want the formatting of text in the archive windows and the directory listbox to be correct you must use Helv in either 8 point regular for VGA and 800 X 600 Super VGA. For 1024 X 768 and higher resolutions use Helv 10 point bold. Windows 3.1 ----------- MS Sans Serif replaces Helv in Windows 3.1. You can use this font if you have Windows 3.1, or copy the Helv font from Windows 3.0 to your Windows 3.1 system directory and then add it to Windows 3.1 using the control panel "Fonts" selection. Pressing Cancel To Stop An ARJ Command ------------------- If you press the cancel button when creating or extracting files from an ARJ, the cancel request will be acknowledged when the current file process is finished. If you are extracting a single file, the cancel process will not receive the message in time to cancel it. File Already Exists On Disk Error Messages ------------------------------------------ Both our UNZIP.DLL and ARJ for Windows may give you the "file already exists on disk, Overwrite Yes/No" warning message when the file is NOT on your disk. -> This will occur only when there are two or more files in an archive that have the exact same name! If you recieve this message and you are absolutely sure that the file IS NOT on your drive, check the contents of your archive and remove the duplicate file. This can only happen when you are storing files in an archive with full pathnames. This feature is provided for your protection by alerting you to the possibility that you may have inadvertanly added the same file to your archive from two different directories. Using The Utility Programs Supplied With D'Compress -------------------------- -> Please Note that any utility you want to use with D'Compress MUST <- BE LOCATED IN A DIRECTORY LISTED IN THE PATH STATEMENT OF YOUR AUTOEXEC.BAT File, this includes anti-virus programs. In the D'Compress \UTILS subdirectory are a variety of archive utility programs. These programs MUST be located in a directory that is listed in the path statement of your autoexec.bat file. If you prefer you can always edit your path statement to include the D'Compress \UTILS directory. Assuming you accepted the default directory when you installed the program, you would add this statement to the existing path statement in your autoexec.bat file: C:\DCWIN\UTILS The line would now look something like this: Path=C:\;C:\DOS5\;C:\DCWIN\UTILS\;C:\WINDOWS\; and so on. Virus Detection Programs ------------------------ D'Compress includes VIRX for the PC. This is an excellent virus detection program which detects nearly 1000 different viruses! It is also the fastest running program we have ever used. If you have a large hard drive you will definitely appreciate its speed. Special Note On VIRX -------------------- If you decide to use VIRX, you will be able to scan a subdirectory as well as your entire drive. To scan a subdirectory and any directories below it, follow the directions below: 1.) Change to the directory you want to scan. 2.) Select Scan Entire Drive from the special menu. 3.) VIRX will then scan the directory and any directory below it. If you want to scan your entire drive you must change to the root of the drive you want to scan. Then select "Scan Entire Drive" from the SPECIAL menu. Other virus detection programs known to work well with D'Compress are: Norton Anti Virus For Windows McCAffee and Associates SCAN program. We have had reports that certain anti-virus programs have problems working with Windows in general. Please test you anti-virus program on Windows itself before using it with D'Compress. Using The Drag and Drop Correctly --------------------------------- Please take the time to read the documentation covering the Drag and Drop features of D'Compress. We want you to be able to take full advantage of this feature, and to use it correctly. Running A Program From An Archive --------------------------------- The purpose of D'Compress is to allow you to work with archived files easily. In keeping with this basic design philosophy, D'Compress allows you to run a program directly from an archive simply by double clicking on it. This way, you can inspect a program in an archive and decide if it is worth extracting it on a permanent basis. !!! IMPORTANT NOTES !!! You MUST terminate the program extracted from the archive BEFORE you close your current D'Compress session. A file that is extracted from an archive by DOUBLE CLICKING on it, is extracted ONLY on a temporary basis. This allows you to examine text files, view bitmaps, run programs, etc... without having to formally extract the archive. However, when you exit D'Compress these temporarily extracted files are deleted. If you exit D'Compress with a temporary application running, the file will be deleted from your hard drive as part of the exit procedure. The result would be a "hung" system as soon as the program you left running tried to access the disk. As long as you keep this in mind when running a file from an archive you won't have any problems! Deleting Comments In Archives ----------------------------- To Delete a comment in an archive: 1. Highlight the file that has the comment you want to delete. 2. Choose Edit, then Comment from the edit menu. 3. When ARJ or ZIP prompts you for the comment, backspace the old off, then press the space bar. This will delete the comment from the archive. Creating A Self Extracting Archive --------------------------------- In order to create a self-extracting archive (filename.EXE), you must FIRST create the archive, THEN create the self-extracting archive. We have found that the fastest compression method switch does not work with the ARJ self-extracting program and will cause an error message. For ARJ self-extracting archives, please use a slower compression rate. The Default Work Directory -------------------------- The program creates its own work directory called \DCWINWRK. It uses this directory for all of its temporary file extraction work. PLEASE DO NOT DELETE THIS DIRECTORY. The program automatically deletes all of the files in this directory when you exit D'Compress. The Borland BWCC.DLL -------------------- D'Compress uses the Borland, Inc. Custom Control Library. Our version of the BWCC.DLL contains Buttons that are not contained in the original DLL as shipped by Borland. If you load a program before D'Compress that also uses this DLL some of the bitmap buttons will appear as normal buttons in D'Compress. If you prefer our buttons over the Borland buttons you can do the following to ensure that you will always see our buttons in applications that use this DLL. 1. Copy the BWCC.DLL in the D'Compress Directory to BWCC.EXE using the DOS copy command. You would type: "copy BWCC.DLL BWCC.EXE" without the quotes. 2. Open the WIN.INI file located in your Windows directory using you favorite text editor, or the Windows Notepad Program. 3. Locate the [Windows] section, it should be the very first line of the file. In the load= line add this statement: X:\DCWIN\BWCC.EXE The X equals the drive letter where D'Compress is installed and DCWIN represents the directory where you installed D'Compress. 4. Save your WIN.INI file and then restart Windows 5. You won't visibly notice that anything was loaded, but our bitmap set will now be the default for any application the uses the BWCC.DLL Many thanks to Borland for allowing this DLL to be shipped with applications. -------------------------------- Corrections To The Documentation -------------------------------- The File Viewer --------------- Where the documentation refers to the available graphics viewers the formats should read. .BMP, .PCX, and .GIF. This version of D'Compress does not include a viewer for TIF files as stated in the documentation. The documentation states that you can access the file viewer by double clicking on an item in either the directory listbox or an archive window, this is incorrect! It should read: When you double click on an item in the directory listbox or an archive window it will load that item into the text editor you defined when setting the D'Compress defaults. Double clicking on an item will always start and load the editor. You access the file viewer in the following manner. 1. Select a file in the directory listbox, or an archive window. 2. Either press the ToolBar File Viewer button, or select the View File option from the Special menu. Repairing a Damaged ARJ File ---------------------------- The documentation incorrectly describes the process of repairing a damaged ARJ file. ARJ doesn't attempt to rebuild a damaged archive like other archive programs. Instead, ARJ extracts the files from a damaged ARJ and you must re-archive them. This helps ensure that your files are no longer contained in a corrupted archive. To recover files from a damaged ARJ file, follow the steps outlined below. 1. Copy the ARJ file in question to an empty directory or a ram drive. 2. Highlight the file in the directory listbox but DO NOT open it. Recovery is only possible when the archive is not displayed in a window. 3. Select Repair/Recover from the Special Menu, and choose ARJ File. 4. ARJ will attempt to extract all of the undamaged files from the archive but IT WILL NOT re-archive them. 5. After you have verified that the extracted files are intact you must create a new archive and place the recovered files in it. 6. This process ensures that your new archive contains only valid data files. Copy and Move Files ------------------- The Copy and Move file commands will create a new directory for you if you enter a target directory that doesn't exist. It won't warn you that it is creating the new directory. Be careful when entering data in this field to avoid a typo or you may end up with a directory you didn't intend to create. Rename ------ The Rename function will rename files AND directories. -------------------- Additional Features -------------------- The Change Directory and Double Dot Buttons ------------------------------------------- Located below the directory listbox are two buttons. They are the Change Directory and Double Dot buttons. The Change Directory button displays the change directory dialog box. It allows you to quickly change to a new directory. The Double Dot button allows you to move quickly up one directory from the current one. Compressed Vs Original File Size Information -------------------------------------------- When you have an archive window open the status bar at the bottom of the window displays the following information: 1. Total number of files in the archive. 2. Size of the files after compression. 3. Original size of the files before compression. 4. The amount the files were compressed expressed as a percentage. Support For DOS or Windows Based Virus Detection Programs ------------------------------- When configuring D'Compress you now have the option of specifying whether the virus detection program you are using is DOS or Windows based. ARJ for DOS ----------- D'Compress includes the ARJ compression program for DOS. We wanted to provide you with complete support for ARJ and there may be times when you need to compress files from DOS. Please refer to the ARJWREF.DOC file for complete information on the command line operation of the DOS version. PKZIP,PKUNZIP,PKZIPFIX, and ZIP2EXE ----------------------------------- D'Compress includes fully licensed copies of these utilities from PKWare. ---------------------------- Additional Programs Supplied With D'Compress ---------------------------- For your convenience we have supplied a number of shareware or freeware archive utility programs with D'Compress. These files are provided for the sole purpose of giving you the option of converting other compression formats to ARJ format only. If you use any of these programs on a regular basis you should contact the author and register the program with them. Shareware is an excellent means of distributing software, but its success relies solely on your good faith to pay the author for their hard work if you use their program regularly. Please remember that shareware is not free software. A Freeware program is one that has been donated to the public domain by the author. ARC-E.COM --------- D'Compress uses this program to convert .ARC format files to ARJ format. This is a Freeware Program LHARC.EXE --------- D'Compress uses this program to convert .LZH format files to ARJ format. This is a Freeware Program. PAK.EXE ------- D'Compress uses this program to convert .PAK format files to ARJ format. This is a Shareware program, remember to register it if you use it more than once or twice. ZOO.EXE ------- D'Compress uses this program to convert .ZOO format files to ARJ format. The is a Freeware program. The documentation for these programs if available is located in the DOCS directory which the install program created for you in your D'Compress directory. The programs are located in the UTILS directory. end...