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• SHAREWARE - $5 - CASH ONLY
◊ This program is distributed as Shareware: this means that if you use it regularly you should send $5 (more or less, depending on how much you like this piece of software) to the author at the address above. Since collecting international cheques is VERY expensive, please send CASH ONLY. VERY expensive means that banks charge some $15 to $30. Thus, DO NOT send cheques, please.
◊ NOTE: Getting some (usually very few) bucks is what you write shareware for, but getting a note, a postcard or anything else is a lot better than getting nothing. I would like to know how far this program has gone, so remember that you can do something nice even if you do not have a couple of $ to spare.
• SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
◊ FaberFinder 4.1 and later should not need the 128k ROMs (Mac Plus or later Macs); if you are still using the original Mac 128 or 512 and FaberFinder bombs, drop me a line. It works (at least) on my old, faithful Mac Plus under System 1.1, 2.0, 4.0, 4.3, 6.0.2, 6.0.8; you can use it under System 7.0 or later, but System 7 is not fully supported: you cannot launch desk accessories from the directory dialog box, for instance.
Under Systems older than 4.0 the Special menu is disabled, because the System does not implement the Shutdown Manager. To restart your Mac, eject all the disks with the Eject button in the directory dialog box, then hit the reset button on the left side of your Mac. To shut down, eject the disks, then power off the Mac with the on/off switch.
• GENERAL INFO
I have included two copies of FaberFinder: one to be used as a normal application, one to be used instead of the Finder. The two copies are identical, only the type and creator are different. I included the two copies because non-technical users might not be able to change the type and creator. FaberFinder may be useful for emergency disks, where space is at a premium.
Important note for making System 7 emergency disks: simply putting FaberFinder disguised as the Finder in the System folder does not work. That is, when you boot with the disk and try launching an application, the Mac hangs. The solution requires using a sector editor or boot block editor (unfortunately, a power user tool). Open the System folder on your disk, and rename Finder to FaberFinder (keep the System folder window open in the Finder, otherwise the Finder will detect that you changed the name and possibly invalidate the boot blocks on the disk). With the boot block editor, change the Finder Name to “FaberFinder” and change, if necessary, the Initial File to Run to “Finder”. Eject the disk without touching its windows. The disk should boot fine, and FaberFinder will not hang when launching applications.
• THE TALE
I started writing FaberFinder in 1988, I think. I had a Plus with two 800K floppy drives. Disk space was at a premium, so I decided to get rid of the Finder on some of my startup disks. More fonts, more extensions, more everything. Unfortunately, I had no Internet access (nor I did know Internet existed!), so the rest of the world had to live without FaberFinder. The very first version saw the light when System 4.0 was still in the works (remember? the first release with the Shutdown Manager…). Then came System 4.1 (remember? the one that introduced the arrows in the menus, hierarchic menus and the first routines for handling the popup menus), then, … then MultiFinder came, then System 6…
I even wrote a version history and a “Read me” document, shown below. Then the development stopped at 4.0.1. Then I lost both the latest source file, documentation, and assembled application. Even my friends lost their copy of FaberFinder 4.0.1, so I could not, at least, recover the source by disassembling the application.
Time passes…
Eventually, in November 1993 I found a copy of FaberFinder 4.0 and its documentation. With the experience accumulated in years, I juggled again with the assembler code and FaberFinder 4.1 is here.
• THE OLD READ-ME
This program has been written to save time. In fact loading the Finder takes a lot of precious time, even if you have the cache memory turned on. FaberFinder (FF for short) loads in very few seconds, due to the fact it is only 3K (less than this documentation).
You can simply launch applications as if you were opening documents. The user can freely select menus also when the directory dialog box is opened. Note that when you choose a desk accessory such as the Calculator, the directory dialog box disappears. This has been done to avoid a terrifying BOMB!
Peeking at the resources with ResEdit, you can see a ‘STR ’ 128; here is the name of the desk accessory you may open at startup. This name is set to ‘ DiskTop’, but can be modified as you wish. The white space I left before the string is an ASCII code 0, which is absolutely necessary; if it is not present, the desk accessory will not open. When changing this string with ResEdit, make sure you are not clearing this invisible character, to prevent undesirable madness. If you want to bypass the “Open desk accessory” feature temporarily, hold the mouse button down while FF is loading, and the directory dialog box will be presented instead. Obviously, if the desk accessory with that name is not present in the Apple menu, or if the ‘STR ’ resource itself has been deleted, you will bypass this feature automatically.
The launched application WILL RETURN to FF, no matter where FF is located on disks. This feature, technically called sublaunch, is available only with System 4.1 or later. System 4.0 and earlier have not this capability. If you want to return to the true Finder, you have to keep the Command key down while quitting from an application.
System switch option: the directory dialog box sees also the Apple Finder. If you launch the Finder or another application named ‘Finder’, FF will switch the system to that disk, looking if the ‘System’ file is present. Note that in this way you cannot launch applications named ‘Finder’, unless there is a ‘System’ in that folder. FF also checks if the Finder you are launching is on the current system disk; in this case you will simply quit to the Finder. Please note that to switch systems you MUST launch an application named ‘Finder’: launching an application on a startup disk will not lead to a system switch.
Note for Suitcase II™ users: Steve Brecher’s masterpiece (version 1.2.2) still has a bug. If you switch systems, apparently all is perfect, on the contrary the FF file is still open, so you cannot re-launch it, and the Suitcase II file remains also open.
Note for SFVol users: this little utility (version 1.5) has a nasty bug. Keep the directory dialog box open, call Suitcase II, press Command-O; exiting Suitcase you get a bomb ID=2, but only if you are using Lau’s extension.
For other features, read the program development section.
• DISCLAIMER
◊ “No warranties at all, either express or implied…” “All trademarks are held by their respective owners…” and all that stuff.
This application should do no damage, but if it does then you will be on your own. Let me know of any bugs you run into, anyway.
• VERSION HISTORY:
1.0
First Release, written in Pascal.
2.0
Program was entirely rewritten to allow menu selections ALWAYS; first Assembler optimizing.
2.0.1
Bug fix: clicking on the menu bar or choosing a menu while the directory dialog box was open caused a nonsense-beep from the speaker.
3.0
Added open desk accessory on startup & Finder substitution; code optimized.
3.0.1
Bug fix: if the user pressed the Option key in order to return to FF while it was NOT in the System Folder caused problems: when quitting from the application just launched, the System forced you to restart. (Could not find FF).
3.0.2
Bug fix: choosing a desk accessory, then Launch…, and then selecting the desk accessory window caused a system error; now the directory dialog box automatically disappears.
3.1
True sub-launching feature added, with Command key instead of Option key (System 4.1 or later).
3.2
Added ‘System switching’ feature, but it does not work well.
3.2.1
Now FF does more tests before system-switching; it now works much better than before. Info DLOG was changed to an ALRT to save code.
3.2.2
If the user attempted to insert a damaged or unreadable disk while the directory dialog box was not open, the Mac did not ask for initializing; this was fixed. Remember the Command-key feature? Now, instead of waiting the next launch, FF returns directly to the Finder if that key is pressed while loading. Furthermore, FF checks if there is enough memory to open a desk accessory. If not, you will hear a beep from the speaker. You can also hear this short beep, choosing a DA with the System disk ejected, then pressing Command-. to cancel the opening of the DA. When running under System 6.0.2 the stupid _GetNextEvent trap asks again for the disk; INSERT IT if you do not want a System Error ID=23. No problem with earlier systems: only a beep.
3.2.3
V3.2.2 introduced a bug in opening DAs: in the attempt of looking for free space in memory, I made a “handle” which was not disposed of correctly. So asking M times for a DA whose code is N Kbytes big, caused a memory waste of (M-1)*N Kbytes. This was particularly pernicious with enormous DAs like McSink or DiskTop. Now the DAs occupy only the space they need (and the memory checking is still valid). ‘vers’ resources added.
3.3
FF now closes all open DAs before quitting, launching, or shutting down. To verify the effectiveness of this feature you can modify a document with a DA like DeskPaint™ or Vantage™ and quit. The DA will ask if you want to save changes.
3.4
The directory dialog box is centered on larger screens too. In the info ALRT, the two static text items were merged into only one item; this saved ten bytes at least. Two “byte-saving” modifications on code.
4.0
Now fully MultiFinder friendly! Size increases to 2.5K. FF under the Finder works exactly the same as before (although memory management is better).
New 4.0 features:
holding down the shift key while choosing Launch… shows all files, allowing you, for instance, to launch MultiFinder;
auto-opening a desk accessory is not tried if under MultiFinder;
it is possible to work with MultiFinder but without the Finder: put FF in the System Folder (otherwise MultiFinder will complain), set FF as startup application (with Finder selected, not MultiFinder), then launch MultiFinder as described before;
the about box shows the application heap maximum free block of memory if running under the Finder, the maximum free block available to applications with MultiFinder, which was more than 800K on my lowly Mac Plus with 1Meg of RAM!
4.1
Added a confirmation dialog if you restart or shut down when MultiFinder is running. You can bypass this dialog by holding down the shift key.
Now more System 7.0 compliant. Does not call _MaxApplZone if running on the old 64K ROM Macs (however, I cannot tell if it will run or not, because I have no 64K ROM Mac to test with).
4.1.1
A couple of modifications suggested by Alessandro Levi Montalcini.
4.1.2
Maintenance release.
• THANKS TO…
◊ Federico Cavaglià, for his invaluable ß-testing & bug reports.
To report errors, suggestions, or whatever, send e-mail to simula3@di.unito.it
