README.TXT - MaxFile/PM WIDE BETA VERSION 1.20 REMEMBER THIS IS A BETA! BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP! I'm fairly certain that I have gotten most of the nasties taken care of, but doo-doo happens, be safe and backup before you even think about running this version. Please be thorough in your testing. *I can not stress this enough* I made a number of mistakes on the earlier versions of MaxFile/PM that would have been caught had there been more testing done on each beta as it was released. Please, please, run the program multiple times, stress it out. Open tons and tons of windows, etc... I want to shake as many bugs out now as I can. I am particularly interested in performance when run under 2.10 and the Service Pack and 2.11, these have been my major headaches. [06/20/94] - I have not been able to find the problem (because I can't reproduce it) when running under 2.11 that occurs with the View and Test Archive functions. I have installed an exception handler, I don't know what good it is going to do but hopefully it will catch the problem and at least let me know where the error is occuring. Please use the worksheet at the end of this document when reporting problems. It will help me to document the problems fixed and also give me the necessary information that I need to find any problems. -- 06/14/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- The FILES.BBS Windows are now almost complete, until I can get the semaphores working correctly do NOT attempt to run any of the options on the FILES.BBS context menu in more than one FILES.BBS window at a time. I'm in the process of deciphering the new MSGAPI from Scott Dudley, as soon as I get it figured out and the Announce function working I'll be moving forward to the Settings options. After that all is left is the Install program and some documentation (I'm still looking for volunteers here! :-) The File Announce option on the FILES.BBS window context menu is now active.. **** NOTE: YOU *MUST* HAVE MSGAPI32.DLL INSTALLED IN YOUR LIBPATH FOR THIS VERSION OF MaxFile/PM TO WORK! **** -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The layout for the File Area Window Context Menu follows: Open... Area Sort Tag Description Files Dir Check for Duplicates Search... All Files List Outdated Files... Settings... (*) Product Information (*) - menu option is disabled. The All Files Generator will run in batch mode by specifying the -A switch on the MaxFile/PM command line. -- 06/06/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- Shredder drops are now functional. Direct editing in FILES.BBS Window is now enabled. FILES.BBS menu options activated Save FILES.BBS Insert-> Remove Items Select All Deselect All Area Statistics -- 06/07/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- Added Country specific support for number and date formatting in the All Files Generator and Area Statistics dialog. Use OS/2_System_Setup->Country to change the country settings to test this. FILES.BBS menu options activated Files->Touch Sort Ascending-> Sort Descending-> Description->Edit Description->Copy Description->Format -- 06/08/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- FILES.BBS menu options activated Files->View Files->Virus Scanner Description->Get FILE_ID.DIZ -- 06/09/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- FILES.BBS menu options activated Description->Set FILE_ID.DIZ Files->Adopt Archives->Test Archive Archives->Extract To... -- 06/14/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- File Database Utility is now activated. I've added specific support for Lora, the code should now work properly for the case where "Always" has been selected for "Run File Database Utility" and no file areas have been changed (It should run the utility over the entire file database now.) All menu options EXCEPT for the following are active: Main Area Window->Settings... FILES.BBS Window->Settings... FILES.BBS menu options activated FILES.BBS Window->Archives->ReArchive-> FILES.BBS Window->Files->Announce -- 06/17/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- The Settings Notebook for the Main Area Window is now operational. Most of the semaphores are now in place. Corrected problem in Settings where registration key number was getting put in the field for the registration name. -- 06/17/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- Registration nags :-) are now working, it is still the same as before, the only nag is the Product Information dialog at start up. Shift-Fxx external programs are now working. It works differently now, each item selected gets sent to the external program, one at a time. The Vertical bars in containers now have their position saved. Squashed a little stupidity on my part with regards to Lora and the way I was parsing the SYSFILE.DAT, it WILL read them correctly now. -- 06/18/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- FIXINI.EXE will set the Installed flag that is required for this version of MaxFile/PM in your existing MAXFMPM.INI, simply run it with the path and filename of your MAXFMPM.INI, I.E, FIXINI D:\MAXFILE\MAXFMPM.INI If you don't run this utility, you will have to completely reconfigure MaxFile/PM. Default descriptions are being recognized and used again. If you don't have an extended character defined descriptions are limited to 255 characters, CR, LF and high-ASCII characters are stripped from the description. FILE_ID.DIZ's are being recognized on adoption and insertion now. Download Counters are working again. Date and Size display toggle in FILES.BBS windows works again, it's only temporary and not saved, FILES.BBS windows will always open according to the stored settings. Hotkeys are back! (Happy now guys? ;-) Here's the list: ^ = CTRL, ! = SHIFT Sort Ascending Name ^1 Date ^2 Size ^3 Description ^4 Sort Descending Name ^5 Date ^6 Size ^7 Description ^8 Description Edit ^E Format ^F Get DIZ ^G Set DIZ ^S Files Adopt ^A Announce ^N Touch ^O View ENTER Virus Scan ^C Archives Test ^T Extract to ^X ReArchive to ZIP !F2 to ARJ !F3 to LZH !F4 to ARC !F5 Added a button bar (menu actually) to the FILES.BBS windows. It takes up screen real estate, but it was a heavily requested item. Eventually, it will be a configurable item but for now it is hard wired to always be on and have a set list of options. The actions for each button, moving from left to right, are: Sort Uses the last sort type selected from the context menu in a FILES.BBS Window. If no sort has been selected it defaults to Name/Ascending. Edit Description This is the same as ^E and Edit Description on the context menu. Allows you to edit the description for the highlighted file, if more than one file is highlighted the file with the dotted cursor focus is the one that will have the edit box opened for it. Get FILE_ID.DIZ Attempts to extract the FILE_ID.DIZ from the selected files. Touch Files Touches all the selected files. Virus Scan Runs the defined Virus Scanner on all highlighted files. Test Archive Runs the archiver tests on the highlighted archives. Remove Items Just like 'Remove Items...' from the context menu. If there are any artists out there that have a bitmap editor that would like to come up with some decent button bitmaps for the different functions, I'd REALLY appreciate it if you would send some my way. 32x32 16 color VGA bitmaps are what I am looking for. I'm busy enough being creative with the code, drawing takes too much time and from the looks of the buttons I drew you can tell that I am no artist. :-) And now the moment you all have been waiting for... FEATURE FREEZE MODE *ON* Nothing else will be added until what is already in MaxFile/PM now has been tested. No ifs, ands or buts, I wanna see what is wrong now before I get in any deeper. I've banged out 430k of code in the past 3 weeks, that is a LOT of code to look through to find errors. If this one is cool, I want to go with a wide beta release next week sometime. There are some anxious folks out there. -- 06/19/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- Fixed up the 'About to Shred' dialog so that the listbox doesn't show any items selected. All that listbox does is show the items that are going to be trashed. Also, added the logic to test for the existence of a file in the shredder code so that if the file does NOT exist the user gets prompted and asked if they want to remove the entry from the container. (Elliott :-) Fixed the 'fix' for Default Descriptions.. Added support for HA, RAR and UC2 archivers. -- 06/19/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- Fixed a limit on the number of FILES.BBS windows that can be opened in one gang move, you can only mark and open 64 windows at one time. You CAN have more than 64 windows open, you just can't open more than 64 in one move. I'm not sure what's causing the problem, but limiting the number of windows opening at one time stops the problems with the windows opening. Besides, it's not very likely you are going to have the screen real estate to effectively be able to use that many windows anyhow. :-) FILES.BBS windows now inherit the presentation parameters from the main file area window. The buttons will now tell you what they do when you click them. To view a button's function without activating it, press and hold button 1 down, when you are done viewing it drag the mouse pointer down into the window and release button 1. Added more error testing, to see if I can squash the Viewer bug, let me know how it goes. -- 06/20/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- I've worked on the viewer/tester bug some more, hopefully this time I fixed it. I'm still not able to reproduce them here. :-/ If nothing else you should at least see an error message now. I'm at my wits end with this and the white window lockups, I can't figure out either one. I am still working on them! So keep the reports coming in.. Added a label to the Adopt page in the Settings notebook to identify what the Add/Remove/Listbox controls are for. The button bar can now be toggled as a default for opening windows, its on Main - Page 2 in the Settings notebook. I found a tricky one.. :-) The mutex semaphore for serializing tasks wasn't getting released after displaying the Product Information dialog when selecting it from the File Area Window context menu. Hopefully this was the cause of the "white window lockup." -- 06/25/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, okay I lied about not adding anything else.. :-) But what I did add is going to blow the socks off of most the people that actually give the program a try. Built in REXX support, it is COOL! Please see MAXFMPM.TXT for a complete list of the extensions to REXX I have added and the general idea of how to go about integrating your REXX knowledge into MaxFile/PM. -- 06/27/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- INSTALL.CMD can now be used to install MaxFile/PM into its own directory. I do believe I have *finally* found out what was causing the lockups on the view and list functions! I wasn't setting up the IMPORT/EXPORT parameters before I started to import text into the MLE. This has been fixed. Why it never trapped here I'll never know.. -- 06/28/94 -------------------------------------------------------------- Replaced FIXINI.EXE with FIXINI.CMD, it does the same thing just uses REXX to do it. No doubt about it this time the viewer dialog bug is FINALLY squashed! And if I do say so myself, it is about d*mn time!