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DataLine presents ***** **** **** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ******* ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **** **** v2.00 (18th November 1993) `The Original' Archiving Intuition Interface ©1992 by Paul Mclachlan SHAREWARE ($5) - See my address at the end of this document User Documentation "Anything that happens, happens" -'Mostly Harmless' INTRODUCTION What is the Archiving Intuition Interface? The Archiving Intuition Interface, AII, is a specially developed workbench program that enables even the novice user to archive and de-archive software using most of the various archivers around, without needing to learn (or lookup) multitudes of commands, what they stand for, and type in line length CLI arguments. It utilises the brilliant ReqTools library, by Nico François as well as GadTools. Until recently this has meaned that AII was only useable under KickStart 2.0 or higher. Starting with version 1.38 however, AII will work under KickStart 1.3 just fine. I don't know anyone who has a 1.2 machine, so I cannot test it here but there is no reason why it shouldn't work under this early version of KickStart. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS o An Amiga running KickStart 1.3 or higher. o Some archiving software. The archivers supported by AII are listed below in the documentation. o ReqTools.library in your LIBS: Directory o The execute program in your C: Directory. This can be found on your 1.3 or 2.x WorkBench disk in the C/ directory on that disk. Before I get started, I'd like to thank all the people who have registered for AII. When I first started this program I hardly expected it to be this popular, but after a wonderful review or two in Amiga Shopper and now registrations of ten (10) people. It is very encouraging to see that the spirit of shareware is still alive, and it has encouraged me to continue to develop AII. NEW FEATURES FOR EXPERIENCED USERS If you have previously used AII v1.38 or lower, then you will not need to read this entire docuemnt. In fact, you'll probably only need to read a few paragraphs, to keep you up with the changes. Changes from v1.38/1.37: Under Kickstart 2.x+ AII is now a commodity. What this means, essentially, is that it can be managed via the 'exchange' utility provided by Commodore, and that it can stay dormant without a window on the screen, to be re-enacted by a hotkey or through exchange. Due to this, the iconify gadget has been removed from the 2.x+ interface (although it is still there under the 1.3 version). This is because iconify is of no use if AII can install itself as a commodity. The default hotkey is 'lcommand a', meaning hold down the left amiga key and hit 'a'. This will toggle the Main AII window (on and off). The hotkey can be changed in the tooltypes with the "CX_POPKEY = " or via the usual method from CLI. (This is covered in detail further on in this document). CX_POPUP also works as specified, and this allows you to stop the AII window appearing initially. (So you can run it on startup and always have a dormant AII around). Several more archivers have been added. The addition of Shrink compatibility, as well as two 'whole' disk archivers on the suggestion of F.Morgan (Thanks!). Later in this document is a short section on the abilities of the supported archivers. Since more archivers have been added, the format of the configuration file has been updated. You will need to reselect your archivers through AII again (sorry). To help this along, though, a new configuration editor window has been added to AII. While currently all the features of this are not supported (disabling of archivers is not yet implemented), it is much easier to use than just selecting 7 or 8 archivers one after another. Sorry to the 1.3 people, you will still have to use the old method. Changes from v1.25: Firstly and foremost, the program now works under KickStart 1.3. That should be pretty self explanatory. The reason I'm harping on about is because it effectively doubled the size of the source, and also doubled the time that I've spent on writing this program. By the way, you had better pay your shareware or I'll be really annoyed! Anyway, from 1.25, the archive format .zip has been added. Umm, I'm not so sure which unzip I have used or anything.. btw.. If you have an archive program you would like to see supported, then pay your shareware and tell me about it. It'd be nice if you'd tell me where I can get it as well, like on which fish disk or which SYDNEY bbs... Umm, two little boxes have been added beneath the two getfile gadgets, which show the archive you are working on, or the path you wish to restore to. It does not show multi-files yet as I have no idea how I'm going to fit that in without making the window MUCH larger. I don't particularly want to do that. Oh, the iconify gadget got smaller too, and AII now autodetaches correctly if run from a CLI (silly mistake anyhow) Changes from 1.03: Firstly, there have been more archiving formats entered. This allows you to archive in lha, lzh, arc, and zoo, and de-archive in lha, lzh, arc, zoo, and arj. You cannot archive in arj as a program has not been written that can do it yet. As soon as one comes out, AII will be updated to support it. Next, there has been a change in the user interface. Several of the gadgets have been moved, and the perform gadget resized. This was done to, uh, make it look better. A iconify feature has been added, which can be invoked by clicking on the title 'button', at the top of the window. If you can't find it, buy some glasses, since its about ¼ of the window big. The icon window also remembers its previous position, so you can place it where you want it. Finally, the addition of a Delete file command, enables you to delete files while using the program, in case you make an error, archiving something you didn't want to or whatever. INSTALLATION To install AII simply click and drag the AII program into a suitable directory on your hard drive or system boot disk. If you only have a single disk drive, you may find it more efficient to first drag the program onto the RAM: drive, and then from there onto your system boot disk. The actual setting up of the program is made easy by the 'select archiver' option in the Project menu. Simply run the program, and then select 'Select Archiver...' from the 'Project' menu. This will bring up several file requesters. Use these file requesters to find the archivers that are specified on your hard drive or system disk. Click on OK when you have found and selected this program, or double click on the archiver program name. Now this pathname and setup will be saved to disk in the file S:AII.config. If you ever move any of the archiver programs, you can easily edit this file or use the method described above. AII will try to read its config file every time it is loaded, and if AII cannot find this file then it will use certain defaults, and relys on your system path to allow it to find the program. If you are running from workbench then it is possible that it will not find the archiver. It will warn you that it can not load the config file with a small requester window. It has come to my attention that AII is getting quite large (now over 50k in fact). This may impede installation on non-hard drive systems. Keep in mind however, that powerpacker 4 will crunch AII down to a small 23576 bytes, more than halving the size of AII. So if space is a problem, try that. TROUBLE SHOOTING WITH INSTALLATION If the program does not work as you expect, then first check that your expectations are correct :) But if you cannot get it to work, try some of the following: o Ensure that reqtools.library is present in your LIBS: directory. It is preferable to have a more recent version, such as 36 or higher. Version 37 or 38 are ideal. o Ensure that you have chosen the correct archiver and that it has saved to your disk. You disk should not be write protected when AII attempts to save its configuration file. If you are running from workbench, it is especially important that the config is set correctly. If it is not then there is the possibility of AII not being able to find your archiver! o Ensure that the Execute command is either in your C: directory or resident. Without it AII will find it much more difficult to archive. (Although it may still manage - there are about 4 different methods included if others fail) o The logical device RAM: cannot be write protected. AII uses the RAM: drive as a temporary device. If you have a disk you have called RAM: in a drive and have write protected it, then AII may or may not manage to perform the operation. Also under KickStart 1.3, you will need to have the ramdisk.device in the devs: directory. If all else fails you can contact me at my address at the bottom of this file or in the about requester of AII. If you have paid your shareware fee and supply a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope than I will reply as quickly as possible. USAGE Wow, if you've got this far then obviously you really intend to read these docs. Usage is fairly simple, and made simpler by an extensive help feature in the program. Nevertheless, I will describe all the features of the program here. PROJECT MENU: The one and only menu. There are a few things in here that might prove useful. HELP MODE: HotKey Amiga h By selecting this menu, you can toggle help mode on and off. This means that it turns help on and off. Help mode is used by simply turning it on, and then selecting the function that you would like help on. I think the help is pretty good actually :) SELECT ARCHIVER: This is used to configure the program. By selecting it you enable a file requester that lets you pick where your various archivers are and what it is called on your hard drive or system disk. This is then saved in the file S:AII.config. If the disk is write protected then AII will not be able to save the configuration, and you will be asked to configure the program again next time you load up, until it has written to the disk. Starting with version 2.0, under kickstart 2.x+, this option will open a configuration window which allows you to more easily change the archivers. String gadgets show the archiver currently selected, a file requestor gadget on the right allows selection of another archiver (or you could type the filename). The disable button on the far right, while it works is not fully implemented yet. It has no function to the working of the program. DELETE FILE: This brings up a file requester allowing you to delete a file of your choice. Kinda obvious, huh? (Thats why it wasn't in the 1.25 documentation.. I forgot - more to the point, that's why it hasn't been in the online help until version 2.. I forgot :) ABOUT: Try it and see :) QUIT: HotKey Amiga Q This enables you to leave/exit/quit the program. ICONIFY GADGET: This gadget is only present when running under 1.3. Under 2.x+ AII is a commodity and is iconified through exchange or its hotkey. This gadget has the words 'ARCHIVING INTUITION INTERFACE' in it, and doubles as a title and an iconify gadget. When you select this gadget, the window is replaced by a 'title bar' size window. You can return to the original AII window by clicking the right mouse button while this window is activated. You can also quit AII in the usual way from here by selecting the close gadget. ARCHIVING METHOD GADGET: This gadget is a cycle gadget. It cycles through the different compression methods that this archiver supports, by suffix. At the moment this gadget supports nine methods, .lha, .lzh, .zoo, .arc, .arj, .zip, .dms, .lhw and .shr. So if, for example, you wanted to de-archive 'Myfile.lha' then this gadget should be set to '.lha' as that is the suffix of the archive. COMMAND GADGET: Another cycle gadget, this allows you to select from the various forms of commands for the archiver program, such as Add Files or Extract files. The actual functions in these commands are all supported by the LHA archiver, which is also the most popular archiver around at the moment. The other archivers, however, do not support all of these commands, and if you select a command that is not supported by the current archiving method, then AII will let you know with a small requester. The commands are: ADD FILES: This function allows you to add files to the archive specified. It will also create a new archive if you specify a non-existant file. The archive filename that you have selected will appear in the box below the gadget. APPEND ARCHIVES: With this command it is possible to concatenate several archives to one or to append several archives to the end of another. So, if you have 3 archives, and you wish to 'join' them together, then you can use this command. Specify the destination archive as usual, then, instead of filenames, select archives to concatenate. If you specify an existing archive as the destination, then the other archives will be appended to this one. EXTRACT FILES: With this command it is possible to take a copy of the files in the archive out, and place them in the directory specified. Full Path: This extracts the files with their filepaths as well. LIST FILES: The various list commands show the contents of the archive, or, if you like, the filenames in the archive. The higher the level of complexity (short, verbose, full - in that order), the more information is shown about the files. Try it out on any existing archive. TEST INTEGRITY: This command tests the files in the archive, to ensure that they are all complete and proper. Especially useful if you have downloaded a file and you think some line noise has gotten through, or if you have accidently corrupted a disk. FRESHEN FILES: This command can be used to replace older files in the archive with new files from the files selected. This command never actually adds additional files to the archives, only files that are already present and older will be replaced. UPDATE FILES: This performs in exactly the same way as freshen, except that files that are specified and not already in the archive are added as well. CHOOSE ARCHIVE: This getfile gadget allows you to select the archive that you wish to use. If the archive is new, then simply type the archive name in the appropriate space after selecting the correct directory. Otherwise, you can just double click on the name or click on the name and then click okay. The archive name that you have selected will appear, without its path in the box below the gadget. CHOOSE FILES/PATH: This getfile gadget changes in function depending on the command selected currently. If you are extracting files then you will need to select an output directory for the files to go into, and if you are adding, updating of refreshing files than you need to specify the files to be used. Directory selection: Simply click your way through the directory levels until you get to the directory that you want to dearchive to. Note that no files will be displayed in the directory requester. The final directory that you have selected will appear in the box below the gadget. Multifile selection: In this requester, you can select multiple files, either by using the 'all' gadget for all the files visible, the 'match' gadget for files matching a certain pattern (see your AmigaDOS manual for more on pattern matching) or by holding down the shift key and clicking on the files that you want to use. When you have finished and all the files that you want are highlighted, simply click on 'Okay' in the lower left corner. (NB: When using one of the full disk archivers (DMS or LHW), this gadget has no function whatsoever. The internal (DF0) drive is always used when using the disk archivers) OPTIONS or the CHECKBOX gadgets: All of these options are supported by the LHA archiver, but many are not supported by the other archivers. If you have selected an option that is not supported, then that will just be ignored, and AII will execute the command anyway. This was done because the options are just that, options, and certainly not vital to the archive. If you wish to know what the various options mean, you can consult the LHA documentation, or the help mode of AII. PERFORM: This gadget will actually execute the archiver that you have selected with the options you have specified. AII checks that you have selected an archive to work on, but not if you have selected any files. After all, not selecting the archive crashes the computer, but not selecting files just wastes a little time. Another window will open up, and the archiver output will be displayed in there. When the archiver has finished, you can click the close gadget to this window and it will disappear. WHICH ARCHIVING METHOD SHOULD I USE Here is a list of compression results on some standard files: Test.shr 3346 ----rwed Today 17:16:50 Test.lha 3295 ----rw-d Today 17:18:58 Test.zoo 4912 ----rwed Today 17:16:02 TEST.ARC 4701 ----rwed Today 17:16:02 As you can see, LHA has the best compression, with Shrink a close second. (btw, these files were created using AII - of course!) CHANGING THE HOTKEY (under 2.x+) While fairly self-explanatory (as with all commodities) through workbench, I will briefly outline the procedure for changing the hotkey when you run AII from the CLI. The easiest way to explain is perhaps with an example: AII "CX_POPKEY=rcommand esc" Causes AII to be started with its hotkey (which toggles its window) as the right amiga key held down when you hit escape. Other command line options are outlined in this more extensive example (which is actually only a single line, but split to fit on your screen): AII "CX_POPKEY=rcommand esc" "CX_PRIORITY=2" "CX_POPUP=No" Priority is rather complex and I won't attempt to explain it (check your AmigaDOS manuals). The Popup function determines whether or not the AII window opens when you first run it. It defaults to Yes (ie, the AII window comes up), but if you set it to no you will need to hit the hotkey or use exchange to open the window. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- RELEASE HISTORY: v1.00 Before release First version. Complete with online help :) v1.01 Before release Fixed a bug whereby the poota crashed if archiving method was not selected. Thanks to Chris for finding the bug. v1.02 Before release Fixed a bug where the poota crashed if LHA returned a fail code. v1.03 First release version 20/12/1992 Fixed a bug where the program could not de-archive to any device ending with a ':'. Only directories could be de-archived to. This has now been corrected. Thanks to Chris for finding the bug. v1.10 Not released 16/1/1993 Added several archivers, including arj, pak, zoo and arc. Fixed the bug which didn't allow AII to put its little 'operation complete' message at the end of the operation. v1.20 17/1/1993 Removed pak archiver 'cause it was silly. Added a delete file menu option. Fixed the window open bug, where it was trying to open a window with a ':' specified twice in it. The second one replaced with a '-'. I think it looks okay. v1.25 17/1/1993 Added an iconify feature. By clicking on the title you can iconify the window. This window also remembers its previous position. It is quite large.. maybe I should make it smaller...nahh. v1.30 20/1/1993 Added KickStart 1.3 support. Making cycle gadgets under Kickstart 1.3 is fun. Added the box to show the selected archive or path. I'm gonna have to change it later so that if you select multiple files it will show the first or something... Only released to Chris... I'll be very angry if he spreads it... v1.31 21/1/1993 (Early morning) Auto detach from CLI... Fixed a few bugs, made the About Requester look prettier. Actually released this to more than Chris. :) Should see this version on the great mag, MegaDisc. If you live in Australia and have never seen it, give the editor a ring on (02) 959-3692. If you live overseas... well, maybe in a few years :) (eh, Tim?) v1.32 21/1/1993 (After some sleep) Worked all day to add a 2.0 look to the 1.3 interface. All the gadgets now look like they are bevelled. v1.33 21/1/1993 (Later that night) A few minor cosmetic changes. v1.34 22/1/1993 Now AII can be used to archive many things at once, since it 'runs' the archive command. Also found a bug: when the program auto-detaches from the CLI, the CLI cannot be shut until the program is. Umm, pretty awful bug, but its better than AII not detach-ing at all, huh? v1.35 27/1/1993 Umm. Fixed that AutoDetach bug. v1.37 1/3/1993 Fixed a bug which actually prevented AII from running under KickStart 1.3 :( Pretty stupid bug, as well. Thanks to Lee of Dataline for pointing it out. Sorry to all MegaDisc subscribers who have suffered under not being able to get the program to work. v2.00 18/11/1993 Added three new archivers, DMS, LHWarp and Shrink: The first two are whole disk archivers. Added Commodity support under 2.x+, and removed the iconify feature under 2.x+. Fixed some un deallocated memory bugs (that probably never even occurred anywhere). Added a new configuration editor under 2.x+ mode. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- FUTURE PLANS: Sometime in the future I'd like to add 'intelligent' operations for dearchiving, so you can select a whole batch of archives from all different archivers and AII will just go through and work out which archive needs which program and de-archive them all. I'd love to be able to get those 'checkbox' gadgets to ghost under 1.3, but no matter what I do... :) FINALLY: I have, of course, tried to make this program as easy to use as possible. I feel this documentation is adequate to describe the features that are not covered by the help function in the program. Tell me what you think of my program, and send in your shareware fee ($5 recommended) if you like it, huh? Here's my address: Paul Mclachlan 60 Hatfield street Blakehurst, 2221 Sydney, Australia ph: (02) 546-1346 Get in touch! CREDITS: Thanks to: Chris Burton for the concept of AII + beta testing. William Waring for some ideas for features and coding. Nico François for the brilliant Reqtools.library Jan van den Baard for Gadtoolsbox which made life easier Stephan Boberg for Lha Raymond S. Brand for Arc Rahul Desi & J. Brian Waters for Zoo Peer Hasselmeyer for UnARJ Samuel Smith & Greg Tavares for UnZip Jonathan Forbes for LhWarp Matthias Meixner for Shrink and, er.. SDS Software for DMS -Don't have a name on that one :( PROGRAMMERS SIDE-NOTE: AII INFORMATION: AII was written in C: Source Code Total Size: 120510 bytes Compiled under: SAS/C v6.30 Total Compile time: 5:07 minutes Final Executable size: 50252 bytes Total Size of distribution: 81850 bytes