DiskStatus is a program which provides a real-time display of the free and used space of all of your current drives, including floppies. It can customize it to display only the activity that you care about or to minimize the screen "Real-estate" used. Since its initial inception, DiskStatus has been expanded to display just about everything about your disk and memory and even some other things. It is intended to be a startup application under Multifinder or System 7.0 Finder, so that it can sit quietly on your desktop and provide information when you need it. Please don't inform me that DiskStatus does or doesn't work under uniFinder. I don't care and I'll think you might be crazy.
Legal Stuff:
DiskStatus is FREE, but not public domain. Morpheus Systems retains all rights. It can not be distributed by Educorp or any similiar operation. The electronic network (Usenet, Internet, Compu$erve, etc), user group, and slip-me-a-disk distribution methods work well enough without somebody making money off of my good will. If I may quietly repeat this:
D I S K S T A T U S M A Y N O T B E D I S T R I B U T E D B Y E D U C O R P
O R A N Y S I M I L I A R O P E R A T I O N
If I find out otherwise, one of the three lawyers I know (depending who most needs an easy case) will be contacting said company immediately. Enough of thisÑI'm starting to salivate.
Localization:
This version should be completely localizable (except for vertical scripts). If you would like to localize DiskStatus for your region or scripting system , please let me know about it so that I can make the localization available, avoid duplication of effort, and possibly provide assistance. Currently 1.2 has been localized into Japanese by Mark Nagata of Japan. The resulting DiskStatus 1.2J is included in this package, but runs correctly only when the Japanese script system is installed. My apologies to Mark for taking so long to distribute his handiwork.
Memory Usage:
For some reason, the Color Picker (used when setting the text colors) steals memory from the application that runs it rather than the global pool. DiskStatus will attempt to make room for it by closing the help window if it is open and unloading unneeded code segments, but the amount of memory that the color picker requires may depend on the screen depth. If this is so (I'm guessing) and you have problems displaying the Color Picker, try increasing DiskStatus' memory partition in 10 or so K increments. A related problem is caused by system extensions which also steal application memory. Increase DiskStatus' partition in the same way.
On color incapable systems (without color quickdraw), the color picker is not used at all and so additional memory could be freed for other applications by reducing DiskStatus' partition. Try partition sizes of 42K or less.
Suggestions:
I appreciate all the suggestions for improvements to DiskStatus over the last year or so. Unfortunately, I haven't keep the best of notes in the past, so some ideas may have fallen through the cracks. For this reason I wouldn't be offended or annoyed if you reminded me that your favorite improvement isn't found in this version.
History:
Release 1.2 Differs from 1.1 in the following respects:
o Adds Date and Time option. What do these have to do with the status of your disk? I don't know.
o Adds option to display the largest free block of memory.
o All text has been put into STR# and TEXT resources so that they can be changed for localization and other customization.
o Uses the correct preferences folder under System 7.0 and later no matter what localization of the system. The folder name used under 6.x is a resource and can be changed.
o Any installed font and font size can be selected.
o Nifty new (quote, unquote) hyper-text help system (with sound under System 7.0).
o Smaller executable and run-time requirements (28k vs 38k and 60K vs 70k).
o Checks for the availability of certain system calls not found with certain machines and disables the appropriate options.
o Fixed several bugs, including problems with displaying the correct values for large disks, problems running out of memory when setting colors, all of the weird display problems (I hope) and other obscurities.
Release 1.1 Fixes the following bugs and insufficiencies over 1.0
o DiskStatus gives up time during its volume scan. What this means is that your Mac will spend less of its time waiting for DiskStatus. This may have been a problem when DiskStatus was looking at a volumes across a network.
o Number amounts have tenths displayed (unless there are zero tenths).
o The space in the status display where the volume name appears can now be restricted to some number of pixels.
o The free or used space can now be "totaled" as a bar graph.
o For drives that are low on space, DiskStatus adjusts to black and white displays by drawing in bold.
o The amount of free memory and number of open files can be displayed.
o Display of network volumes can be disabled.
o The "total" can be aligned.
o A "Nerd" mode has been added to modify the way DiskStatus calculates Kilobytes and Megabytes.
When Nerd Mode is off, a "K" is 1000, a "M" is 1 000 000. When it's on, "K" is 1024 and "M" is 1024*1024.
Yes, I know what a megabyte is. Some people just want to see thousands and millions.
How to contact the developer of DiskStatus: (in the order in which he'd prefer you to contact him)
o E-mail to rri!eric@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (INTERNET)
o E-mail to compuserve, 72607,1472. (Rarely check this)
