TrashMaster

Version 1.5

The ultimate in byte disposal for the Amiga.

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1 Who, what, where, when, why

1.1 WHO

Written by Aric R Caley, AKA Dances V2.0, Dances With Coyotes, Major, Mr Coyote, and other handles/nicknames. :) See the readme file if you wish to contact me.

1.2 WHAT

See Readme in Readme!

1.3 WHERE

Best place is in your WBStartup drawer!

1.4 WHEN

The current version, 1.5, was released on August 2, 2022. The first public release of Trashmaster was Jan 23 1992.

1.5 WHY

I had always wanted to write something like this but until now, I couldnt do it. Not that it was particularly easy to do, even under Workbench 2.0.

2 How I did it

The main problem is with getting finicky old Workbench to stay “in sync” with the filing system.. IE, removing its icons when a file is deleted. Thanks to a new function called DeleteDiskObject(), it’s possible to get workbench to remove an icon. Unfortunately Workbench still is kinda brain-dead... when you have it display ALL files, it spontaneously creates icons in memory for files that dont have them… which results in DeleteDiskObject() not working (no file on disk) and Workbench not removeing the icon. The only solution I could come up with is to PutDiskObject() and then delete this icon, which works more or less pretty well. There are still, however, problems. Workbench, it seems, will “lock” a directory if its window is open on the Workbench screen. This means I can’t delete it until it’s closed… not too big a deal, since when you delete the icon the window closes automaticaly. But what if something else has that directory locked? Then I couldn’t delete it after all… that means I need to put the icon back! heheh. But I think I’ve come up with a good solution.

Another problem is that there’s no way to find out where the AppIcon is, within the WorkBench window — so there is no way to implement a snapshot option within your application (of course, the root problem is that Workbench doesn’t provide any way to “hook” into the Workbench operations like snapshot, info, etc. See below for my solution to this).

This seems like a good place to voice some opinions on Workbench 2.0, and what I’d like to see in the future.

3 Wish list

• DiskObjects should be a BOOPSI class.
  • A BOOPSI class would have methods for all the normal Workbench operations; like info, double click, delete, snapshot, copy/move, etc. That way, an AppIcon could give an “about” requester with the info menu function, and behave in every way just like a regular icon. Say you had an icon for a network machine... info could put up a requester saying what the node’s name was, CPU class, whether it was Ethernet or serial, etc. neat huh? A Drawer could open it’s own type of list window.. perhaps one with a “tree” display. You could replace the standard operation with new ones (via hooks into the DiskObject class). This makes Workbench extremely flexible and extendable and would allow third party people to add tons of functionality to Workbench (I should be able to make Workbench as powerfull as DiskMaster or DirOpus!)
  • This BOOPSI icon would be able to have more than just a bitmap image; like actual structured drawing objects. Of course, this introduces the problem of how to store objects on disk.. which I myself am working on.
  • Any application would now be able to use icons easily (they dont have to have anything to do with Workbench). You could even drag icons from an application to a Workbench window to save a file.
• Clipboard support, with a “view clipboard” window.
• Definable default tools for projects, with file recognition so it knows what tool to run (in case there’s no icon or the normal tool cant be found). And how about a small database that contains application names and then a path to where it is? Actualy, I guess you could have a “Applications” directory, with icons that are linked to whereever the app is — and Workbench would check here first for tools.
• “Left out” icons could be done in the same way, so that the app’s icon is still visible in it’s Drawer, and so that Snapshoting the left out icon doesn’t ruin it’s original coordinates.
• Something needs to be done about the list windows.. they are slow and clumsy, and are missing what I think is a great feature: a “Tree” mode.
• Better tracking of when other apps change/add/delete files.

OK, I’ll step down off my soapbox now!

4 Using Trashmaster

4.1 Usage

To run Trashmaster, simply double click its icon, or run it from a CLI (it will detach from the CLI of course). Obviously, Workbench must be running (and will be, unless you were naughty and modified your startup-sequence). Trashmaster will open an icon on the Workbench screen; this icon will look the same as the icon you ran Trashmaster from. If you want to change it, you can, by modifying the Tooltypes in Trashmaster’s icon (see below about the Tooltypes available). BTW, the icon is supposed to look like a black hole...

If you want to be able to format disks with Trashmaster, you must have WBStart-Handler installed in your L: directory. The WBStart-Handler is included with ToolManager, a must-have utility, or in it’s own separate distribution, both of which should be available on a Fish disk or any good FTP site, or failing that, from me. ToolManager and WBStart are Copyright © 1991-93 Stefan Becker. The default formating program is the same as Workbench’s formatter.

To use Trashmaster, simply drag files and drop them on the icon. A requester will come up, similar to Workbench’s Delete confirmation requester. If you really want to delete the file(s) or dir(s), click OK; if not, hit CANCEL. Remember, once you hit OK, the files are deleted.. they’re gone! For reals. Not like the Trashcan. If you have the VERIFY=OFF tooltype set, you won’t get this requester!

One difference from the Workbench Delete, is the extra option for Interactive deletion. With interactive delete, you will get a confirmation requester for each file you dropped into Trashmaster. For each file, you can choose to either delete it, delete all the rest of the files non-interactively, skip this file, or abort completely.

If Trashmaster comes across a file that is protected from deletion, it will bring up a requester with two options, FORCE and CANCEL. If you select FORCE, Trashmaster will un-protect the file and delete it! Selecting CANCEL will of course cancel the operation. If you have the FORCE=ON tooltype set, you won’t get this requester, the file will simply be deleted without warning.

To quit Trashmaster (which you dont really want to do, do you? :), double click the AppIcon and select the remove option.

If you want Trashmaster started automaticly (you DO, dont you?), place it into the “WBStartup” drawer on your boot disk.

4.2 Tooltypes.

There are 8 Tooltypes you can add/modify:

X=<##>

This is the X coordinate of the icon. A -1 will tell workbench to find a suitable place for the icon.

Y=<##>

This is the Y cooridnate of the icon. A -1 will tell workbench to find a suitable place for the icon.

ICON=<name>

This is the name of a custom icon to be used instead of the default icon (the default being Trashmaster’s icon)

NAME=<name>

Set this to change the name under Trashmaster’s AppIcon.

FORMATTER=<name>

Set to the name of the disk-formatting program of your choice. The program will be started as a Workbench application and passed the disk icon to format.

VERIFY=<ON|OFF>

If set to OFF, the initial verification requester will not appear. If set to anything else, or not present, verify will default to ON. The action performed will be the one defined by the TYPE tooltype. Use at your own risk.

TYPE=<INTERACTIVE>

Applicable only when VERIFY=OFF is set. If set to INTERACTIVE, deletes will default to interactive deletes (requireing confirmation for every file and directory).

FORCE=<ON|OFF>

If set to ON, files that have their protection flags set to delete-protected will be deleted without warning. If set to anything else, or not present, you’ll get a requester whenever you try to delete a protected file.

VERIFY, TYPE and FORCE can work in conjuction. If you don’t want any anoying verification requesters, you can turn VERIFY off, TYPE to nothing (leave it out), and FORCE on. If you always want interactive deletes, have VERIFY off but TYPE set to INTERACTIVE.

Be carefull with these! If you turn off verification and use the FORCE option, anything that gets dropped on TrashMaster will be simply deleted without warning, even if it’s protected from deletion.

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