Shareware Grab Bag/Shareware Grab Bag.iso/011/nswppc18.arc/NSWP.DOC

Text File | 1987-02-23 | 9KB | 214 lines

Dave Rand
10232 - 160 St.
Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA  T5P 3E9
BBS: Edmonton RCPM's [phone], [phone]

02/05/87

Hello!

First of all, let me thank you for your patience and understanding. It has
been a LONG time in coming - but here it is. The first release of the DOS
version of the long-used CPM utility NSWEEP!

To those that have helped make this version possible (Dave McCrady, Chris
Gregors, Jim Lopushinsky, and many others), Thank You for your time. I hope
everyone that will use NSWP in the coming months appreciates the effort these
people have put in.

The release in this archive is a preliminary release, and one feature does
not work - the SQUEEZE function. This should be corrected by 02/10/87, so
those that are waiting for this feature, please hold tight.

Should you discover any bugs (horror!) in this version of NSWP, or any other,
please do not hesitate to leave a message on any of the Edmonton RCPM's, or
drop me a line directly.

More documentation will follow, but for those who know the 8 bit version of
nswp (that documentation is enclosed as NSWP.WS, a WORDSTAR file), here are
the major features:

    o    The 'I' command activates timestamp display
    o    The 'W'ildcard function will accept a '!' as a 'not' indicator,
    so you can w *.*, then remove *.exe from the tagged files with
    w !*.exe
    o    The move, copy, and log commands accept paths, but the directories
    must exist.
    o    The 'F'ind command remembers the last specification, and you may
    search for the next occurance with just a carriage return at the
    find prompt.
    o    Copy and move check free space on the destination before starting
    the copy operation.
    o    The new command '!' exits to DOS, so you can invoke another
    program (even another copy of NSWP!).
    o    NSWP uses a dynamically allocated 64K buffer for the copy I/O.
    o    NSWP automatically senses Concurrent DOS, and uses the correct
    escape sequences for highlighting.
    o    You should have ANSI.SYS installed (This will be optional in a
    future version of NSWP).

There are a few more things, but this should hold you until the new
documentation is complete.

I hope you enjoy this program. If you do, please write me and let me know.
If you don't, let me know that too!

    ** PLEASE DO NOT SEND MONEY FOR THIS PROGRAM **

This is NOT shareware, it is good old fashioned Public Domain Software.
Source code, written in C (with bits in assembler), will be made available
on the Edmonton RCPM's. I do request that any updates you may make to the
source code be sent back to me (I like to know when you find bugs,
or add features).

As always:


                     Disclaimer and warning

     While this program has been tested on many systems,  I  will
have  no  liability  or responsibilty to the user  or  any  other
person  or entity with respect to any liability,  loss or  damage
caused,  or  alledged to be caused directly or indirectly by this
program,  including,  but  not limited to,  any  interruption  of
service,  loss of business, anticipatory profits or consequential
damages resulting from the use of this program.

     Furthermore,  although this program has been placed into the
public domain,  I retain all copyrights to this program,  both in
the U.S.A and in Canada,  and pursuant to this,  this program MAY
NOT  BE  SOLD BY ANY PARTY unless specifically authorized by  the
author,  Dave Rand,  in writing,  prior to  the  first copy being
sold.  As  well,  this program MAY NOT BE INCLUDED IN  ANY  OTHER
PACKAGE FOR SALE,  even if this program is indicated as being 'in
the public domain'. All of the above applies to both the original
as  well  as derived,  or modified copies of  the  original.  Any
modified  copies  of  this program MUST NOT  have  the  copyright
notice violated, changed or altered.




02/06/87

Well, I didn't expect it so soon, but here is the previously unimplemented
SQUEEZE function.



02/08/87

Ok, here are some new features!

    o    Squeeze is 5-8% MORE efficient than the older 8 bit NSWP!
    Faster, too!

    o    If you Zoom on a directory, that directory will be logged.
    If you Zoom on '..', you will go to the previous directory.
    Zooming on '.' will re-log the current directory.

    o    A new command (".") has been implemented - This command allows
    you to create a new directory. It need not be relative to the
    current directory, nor the current drive. You may, for example,
    create "E:\new\old\older\oldest". As with the standard DOS mkdir
    function, all directories but the last one must exist.

    o    The delete function now will delete a directory. NSWP will
    prompt you if there are files in the directory. Directories
    in the directory you wish to delete will not be deleted.

    o    NSWP releases an extra 64K during the "!" command, to allow extra
    memory for DOS commands.

    o    NSWP now puts files from a Squeeze, Unsqueeze, or copy that
    affect the currently logged directory back into the directory
    list of NSWP. As a side effect of this, TAGGED files during
    a squeeze or unsqueeze that are not processed (no compression
    factor for SQ, not a squeezed file for USQ) are UNTAGGED, rather
    than marked as processed ("#"). This means you can do an Again,
    then an Erase Tagged to delete all files that were 'dealt with'.
    This make NSWP much more intuitive to use.



02/09/87
    o    NSWP now supports the timestamping version of SQ/USQ. If your
    squeezed files are timestamped, the unsqueezer will set the
    time and date on the output file. Squeezed files have the
    timestamping information appended to them automatically.
    If no timestamps are present, USQ will leave the file creation
    date set to the current date/time.
    NOTE: This is the Homchick/Sharp SQ/USQ timestamp method.
    Thanks to their planning, files squeezed with this system
    are TOTALLY compatible with earlier versions of NSWP, USQ and
    unsqueezers in general.

    o    A JUMP command has been implemented. This allows you to move
    to a specific file, just by knowing the file number. This is
    handy to get back to '..' (always file # 2), to do a zoom
    to previous directory. Jump also allows you to move relative
    to the current file by placing a '+' or '-' sign in front of
    the number of files you wish to move. +22 would move 22 files
    down the list, and -46 would move 46 files up the list. Wrap
    is supported, so -2 from file 1 will move to the second last
    file.

02/11/87
    o    The FIND command has been extended. If you enter a path-type
    filespec, NSWP will search the directory specified and all of
    its 'children' for the ambiguous filename supplied. For example,
    Find .\*.c will look at the current directory, then all subdirectories
    for any file with the extension ".C". You can also express this
    as c:*.c, or [current path]\*.c where [current path] is the full
    path from the root of the current directory. You can also specify
    \*.C, which will return all files in all directories that have
    the extension ".C". A report on the number of directories searched,
    and the number of files matched will be made at the completion of
    the search. The search may be aborted at any time with a ^X or ^C.

02/15/87
    o    Once again, then find command has been extended. Now, when you
    log (or zoom) to ".." (the previous directory), you can move the
    current file position (normally starts at one) to the position
    of the directory you just came from, just doing a Find <cr>.
    For example, if you were in \pd\asm, and did a zoom to "..",
    a Find <cr> would place you at the <ASM     .   > entry.

    o    Nswp is now MUCH smarter in dealing with the buffer, and with
    squeezing and unsqueezing files. It uses the whole 64K buffer
    for the SQ pre-read buffer, then dynamically splits it up for
    the I/O buffer on USQ and SQ compression phase. As well, NSWP
    forgoes the read if the whole file is already in the buffer
    on a SQ operation. This speeds up squeezing files on floppy.

    o    Source code will be made available to those who need it, at
    this point in time. Since heavy work is going on, I would
    encourage those who wish to work on nswp with me contact me
    at the above address, or at [phone].

02/21/87
    o    Well, the long awaited ARC feature is in! To use, just Zoom
    in on an ARC file... NSWP will do the rest. From inside an
    ARC, you can use the View, Copy and Move functions, to look at
    and move files out of the arcfile. Currently you can't delete
    files, or move files INTO an archive. That will be in the next
    release. NSWP now uses about 30K more memory. The extract feature
    is almost twice as fast as the ARC program, but about half the
    speed of PKXARC. As I get time to bit twiddle, I hope to close
    that gap.

02/22/87
    o    A few bugs in the ARC decompression were fixed, including
    one that prevented you from extracting any old-style crunched
    files. CRCs are now checked. A CRC failure does not stop the
    decompression.

    o    You can now Print files from within an archive.

02/23/87
    o    Squashed file decompression sped up. Getting closer to PKXARC...

    o    Bug in delete fixed. Not all files were being erased within
    a directory if you choose to delete a directory.