MASDIR - The MASter DIRectory System - Release 5.4 Description of new features in Version 5 ***************************************************************** The following MASDIR Version 5 features are described in this supplement to the user manual. * Release 5.4a - maintenance release - no new features. Fixed three items: improved b&w display with /& for plasma screens, improved display of disk free space for large partitions, and fixed the display of moving text in the shareware version. * Release 5.4 (5.3 has been superseded) * New SDLCONFG.BAT is a shorter version of SDLSETUP. * Expanded on-line HELP. Try SDL /?. * Black and White (B&W) option for LCD, monographic, and plasma screens. Try SDL /&. * U option for sUbdirectories only. When U is on, A will toggle between files and subdirectories and vice versa. * Default sort order (Ascending/Descending) for each sort field (Name, Date, eXtension, Size). Ascending for Name and eXtension, descending for Size and Date. These can be changed in SDLSETUP. '-' changes only the current field. * Highlighted menu items indicate current toggle settings with upper case for 'on' and lower case for 'off'. COLS and SORT indicated by non-highlighted character. * B for Bytes option is available at the menu but not listed. Pressing B will toggle between 1k clusters and sectors to get an accurate reading of the file space on floppy diskettes. * SDLSETUP is provided for DR DOS. See SDLSETUP information below. * The environment features have been made fully compatible with 4DOS, DR DOS, and all BATch files. See description below for use with DOS "shells". * If no files are found that match the command line filespec, the SDL menu is presented instead of immediately exiting to DOS. * A star (*) option has been added to the menu to change the filespec to *.* without returning to DOS. * Small increase in size to over 11K, but still considerably smaller and faster than most sorted directory programs with similar features. -2- * Free upgrade from Release 5.2. Please send $2 to cover shipping and handling. * Release 5.2 * Enter two file specifications on the command line. * Enter any DOS command without exiting from SDL. The directory that is being viewed is automatically updated if any changes are made. * Read the directory on a new disk without exiting from SDL. * List only files created in a given time period such as today, the past n days, past month, past quarter, etc. * SET default SDL options in the environment. * The End key is now used to SCROLL to the last screen. * Label printing will skip over the gaps between labels. * New menu items include All, rK, and some of the time keys. * Improved menu driven setup program with new options such as setting the color of the key characters in menus. * Full documentation on disk. * The FREE label offer is being continued. Pay the $2 S&H charge, and select one unit of labels free. * Up to $3 rebate for your purchased shareware disk. * Reduced surcharge for 3.5" diskettes. * Reduction in registration fee to $19. * Upgrade from Version 4.3 for only $4, from 4.2 for $9. ***************************************************************** IMPORTANT *** IMPORTANT *** IMPORTANT *** IMPORTANT *** IMPORTANT USING SDL.COM WITH SHELLS If you use SDL from a "shell" type program, it is a good idea to include the following statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT: SET SDL=S "Why in the world would I ever want to use SDL if I am using a shell program?" you may well ask. True, most shells display all the filenames you might want to see on the screen constantly. -3- But what if you want to display some other file names briefly? Usually, if you are using a shell, you have to change to the directory you want to see, and the shell program has to read the directory, rearrange the file names, and organize its display. I have found this to be slow and awkward. Then, for example, to get back to your working directory you have change directory again and consume more time reread and redisplay the original directory. Suppose, for example, you just want to see what is on a floppy disk. From your shell program you could just issue the DOS command SDL A: and quickly view the contents of the disk in drive A: without going through all the rigmarole of changing directories in your shell. From the SDL menu, you can change the display without exiting to DOS or back to your shell. You can even quickly print a label or sleeve insert of the directory for future reference. When you have seen what you want to see, simply pressing Esc will return you immediately to the shell exactly where you left it. As another example, consider the case where you would like to see just a subset of the files. For example, you would like to see just which files you have created or changed today, or only files with a specific extension, or maybe just the ones with the archive bit set. In most shell programs, to change the file filter you have to bring up a menu, select the display configuration screen, make the changes you want, then let the shell program do its work. When you are finished you have to go back through the process to regain your original display. How much easier to just issue a simple SDL command to see the files you want, then when you exit you are automatically back to your shell exactly where you left it. This is a much simpler procedure to follow. As with many registered and commercial software programs, when it is first called during a computing session, SDL will briefly display copyright and registration information. There is no delay imposed, but the Cls feature will be disabled during this first call so that the information is clearly displayed. To make this as unobtrusive as possible, SDL remembers that it has displayed the copyright information and does not display it again during the session. Since a directory program may be used many times, I feel it is important to keep it as small, fast, and unobtrusive as possible; therefore, the following information is provided. The way SDL remembers is to place a few bytes of information in the DOS environment memory area. The method used to do this is very fast, but due to the nature of DOS it is not remembered if SDL is run from a shell. Issuing the above SET command will bypass the display of the copyright information and avoid this case of amnesia. -4- You can make good use of this information in the environment by including any default options for SDL that you might like. For example, to turn the Header default off you can use SET SDL=/H. Any setting of the variable SDL in the DOS environment will avoid the shell problem. See the additional information below about using the environment to control SDL. NOTE: In release 5.2 this environment feature was incompatible with 4DOS and BATch files. In 5.3 these incompatibilities have been completely removed. ***************************************************************** "No matching file". Previous versions of SDL would exit back to the DOS prompt if no files were found that matched the command line specification. If this was the result of a typographical error, you would have to reenter the correct SDL command. Starting with Release 5.3 you will see the message "No matching file" and the SDL menu (unless you have turned it off with the /M option). Now you can press the * key to immediately change the file specification to *.* to see all files in the specified or default directory without exiting from SDL. For other new menu keys that can be useful see the D, R, A, and K menu items described below. The * selection will not change the effect of any D, A, or K selections. Also, if the specified path is not found, SDL will exit back to the DOS prompt, or to wherever it was called from, since the * selection would do no good for an unknown path. ***************************************************************** Entering two file specifications (filespecs) on the command line. For example, SDL A:*.EXE *.COM will list all .EXE and .COM files in the same directory listing. Another example: SDL A:*.?O? *.?X? will list at least all .COM, .DOC, .TXT, and .EXE files in the same listing. This is a special feature that is included in this release on a trial basis. It may be enhanced or eliminated from future releases. This dual filespec option has some restrictions. You may include a drive and/or a path with the first filespec only. The second filespec will automatically find files in the same drive and directory as the first. You may NOT include any path information, not even a \ to indicate the root directory with the second filespec. If you specify /O for dOs order, all the files for the first filespec will be listed first, and the files for the second filespec will follow. They will be listed in proper order for the other sorting options. Furthermore, you can not use some of the directory shortcuts that are available otherwise. For example, although a single -5- filespec of .exe will list all *.exe files, you must include the * if you are using dual filespecs. Similarly, although SDL A* will list all filenames beginning with A for all extensions, with dual filespecs you must make this entry as A*.*. In other words, unless the files have no extensions, you must include a specification for the name, the period (dot), and a specification for the extension. These restrictions should not be too onerous in those cases where being able to enter more than one filespec is a useful feature. Please let me know your comments about this feature. ***************************************************************** In Version 5 a new second parameter has been added to the /D option to specify a period of time in which the files you want to see were created. The syntax and parameters for this option are: /Dn, n=0,1,...9 specifies files created in the past n days. For example, /D0 specifies only the files created on the current day, and /D7 the past 7 days. /DD or /dd is toDay (same as /d0). /Df is a Fortnight, the past 14 days. Not case sensitive. /Dm is within the current calendar month. /DM is within the past month (28, 30 or 31 days with no correction for Leap Year.) Notice the case sensitivity for M and some others following in the sense that the upper-case letter specifies a period of time greater than or equal to the lower case letter. /DB and /Db are Bimonthly, within 2 months or 60 days. /DQ and /Dq are Quarterly or 3 months. /DS and /Ds are Semiannual or 6 months. /DY and /Dy are within the past year or 365 days. These all also work with the reverse sort (-) parameter so that you can see the most current files at the top of the list. For example, use /DM- or /-DM, not /D-M. You can, of course, also include any of the other switches, such as the /K switch to show only those files which have had the archive bit reset since the last backup, and /A to eliminate subdirectory names. At the End menu (not the intermediate), the 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, M, Q, and Y keys will redisplay only the files created in that time period similar to /Dn on the command line. (2, 4, and 6 are reserved for the number of columns, of course.) To return to the full directory, just press D at the next menu. These selections are not case sensitive and will be used in the upper case sense. ***************************************************************** Another new feature in Version 5 is the / command to permit entering any DOS command. This shows up as /dos on the menu. At the menu at the very end of the display press the / key. You will be prompted to enter any command. At this point any DOS command will be accepted including running another program such -6- as a text editor, LIST, LABEL, or whatever there is sufficient memory for, even a BATch file. When you exit from the program you have been running you will see the "Enter new command or press return" prompt. Pressing return will return you to the SDL directory display which may be changed, depending on the commands you have entered. You can continue to enter DOS commands as long as you like - until you enter an empty line by just pressing return. This feature is not intended to make SDL into a DOS shell, although it has a few of the conveniences of such a shell. It is intended to be just a convenience and must be used with a bit of care. If, for example, you are looking at a directory and you see a file that you would like to do something with, but you are not ready to exit to DOS just yet, you can press / to have your way with it. You can do such things as erase the file, LIST it with Vernon Buerg's LIST program or other file viewer, copy it, use an archive viewer such as SHEZ or LIST to examine it if it is an ARC or ZIP file, LABEL the volume, or enter any legal DOS or program command that you could enter at the DOS prompt and for which you have sufficient memory. If, for example, you ERASE or RENAME a file, when you press return to get your directory display back, it will show you the changes you have made. But be sure the directory you are looking at is the current directory on your system, or that you include full path information with file names - see cautions below. If you invoke more than 2 levels of SDL you will have to exit back the way you came. If you try to exit with Ctrl-C or Ctrl- Break, DOS will return you to SDL at each level you have entered until you get back to the DOS prompt. The following comments, cautions, and reminders should be noted when using the /dos feature: 1. Since commands are passed directly to DOS they will not be seen by alias programs such as CED. If you want to use CED or other aliases, make your first command COMMAND or whatever your command processor is. This will run a secondary command processor and give you a real DOS prompt. When you are finished with DOS, enter EXIT to return to the SDL environment. Note that if your operating system is DR DOS instead of MS or PC DOS, your application command stack may be available when using the /dos feature. This can also be useful in recalling and editing titles for the header lines with the E option. 2. Be careful with the CD (Change Directory) command. You can cause no harm by entering the CD command itself, but it is easy to lose track of where you are in your directory tree. The directory you see displayed may not be the current directory and if you issue a destructive command such as ERASE, DEL, or COPY you may eliminate a file you did not intend to. SDL will always tell you which directory it is displaying unless you have overwritten the third title line. The CD command can, however, -7- be very useful to explore subdirectories that you see on your display. If you have called SDL with no file specification or just a general file specification with no \'s or directory names, then the display you see will be the display of the current directory and you can safely use the CD command to explore. To permit the most flexibility and to eliminate the "big brother" type of hand-holding, no checks are made on the commands that you enter. This keeps SDL's size down and gives the user maximum flexibility. 4. It is a good idea to NOT change drives by issuing a command such as B: from within SDL. Once SDL has been invoked, the drive it looks at is fixed and will not change. Losing your place by changing the default drive can be even more disastrous than losing your place with the CD command. 5. If you are listing the files on a floppy disk and you change disks while using /dos, SDL will automatically list the files on the new disk when you return. But see the next feature for a shortcut way to handle the change of floppy disks. 6. Since you can now use your favorite disk volume labelling program from the /dos prompt, the Vol option has been eliminated. This freed up a considerable number of bytes so that Version 5 is not much larger than Version 4.3. In fact, most of the increase in size is due to the addition of items to the SDL /? on-line help display. The registered version is still under 10K. 7. If you are printing labels or inserts and you use the /dos option, printing will be turned off to allow you to adjust the display. The PgUp, End, All, rK, Read, and the various time period selections will also turn off printing. You may, of course, resume printing when you are ready. For the most part the cautions above are not very restrictive, mostly just common sense and good computing practices. ***************************************************************** There is now a Read selection on the final menu. Pressing R or r at this menu will cause the disk directory to be re-read and a possibly new directory to be displayed. For example, suppose you have issued the command SDL A:. While the menu is displayed you change the diskette in the A-drive. Press R and the directory for the new diskette will be read and displayed. As mentioned above, if you use the /dos option when you change the diskette, it will also cause the directory to be read, but Read is much more convenient. This is a convenient feature for examining and/or labelling a series of diskettes without having to return to DOS after each one. If you are making labels or inserts, it will also preserve any titles you have entered from one diskette to the next. Then if you are using DR DOS, CED or PCED, you can edit them as necessary instead of having to type new ones for each disk. -8- As a side benefit of the Read capability, the A (All), K (arKive bit), and some of the time period options (D,0,1, etc.) will now work from the menu at the end of the display. If you want to toggle the 's off or on, or if you want to see only the files with the archive bit set, just press A or K as appropriate. The All selection is especially useful in the root directory if it has a lot of subdirectory names that you don't need to see. If you are printing labels or inserts and you use any of these options that cause the directory to be read, printing will be turned off to allow you to adjust the display. You may, of course, resume printing when you are ready. A benefit of this is that titles and options that have been entered will be preserved until there is a complete exit to DOS. ***************************************************************** You may find the following several additional new features to be quite useful. Pressing End will now SCROLL to the end of the directory and pause, leaving the last page on the screen. If printing was on, it will be turned off before scrolling. If PgUp is then pressed, it will jump back to the beginning of the file list. Note that both End and PgUp turn off printing if it is on, while Home and PgDn will print another copy of the listing. SDL will use 6 bytes of your environment space to keep track of whether it is active or not. If you see the DOS message "Out of environment space" it means that you should increase the space available. (See the Configuration, SHELL, and COMMAND topics in your DOS manual.) A pleasant side effect of having the SDL information in the environment is the elimination of the copyright notice after SDL has been used the first time. Subsequent uses of SDL during the same session will skip the copyright notice that flashes on the screen just above the directory display. On most machines the copyright notice is so quickly cleared by SDL's clear screen feature that it is not noticeable anyway, but for those slower machines, or users who do not use the clear screen feature, this will make a cleaner display. Note that this is the separate initial copyright message, not the one that is in the header which can be replaced by running SDLSETUP or turned off with the H option. SDL does this by placing the string SDL=S in the environment. The copyright suppression feature does not work with some DOS "shells", but you can work around this by including the statement SET SDL=S in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file if you are a shell user. See the next paragraph for additional features available by using the SET command. -9- Another new feature is the setting of default command line options (switches) in the environment. Any of the / options can be set in the environment by using the DOS SET command to create an SDL variable. This variable can contain a series of / switches in the same manner you would enter them on the command line. For example, SET SDL=/F/H in your AUTOEXEC.BAT would toggle the disk Free space and Header switches whenever you use SDL, effectively reversing the defaults. Switches set in the environment are acted on before command line switches, so you can override any of your environment settings just as you can when you set defaults with SDLSETUP. The toggle switches are acted on each time they are encountered, so putting /F in the environment as above, and also including /F on the command line would toggle the free space switch twice, effectively leaving it unchanged. SETting any SDL= variable in the environment will also suppress the copyright notice. If Labels or Tiny are selected from the Print menu, and there are too many files to fit on one label, then form feeds will be sent to the printer to skip over the gap between labels. This "skip over perf" capability assumes that you have lined up the labels properly, and that if you are using Tiny you have selected the proper number of file rows for Tiny in SDLSETUP. This feature is available only from the Print menu, and not when you use /L or /I on the command line. ***************************************************************** Changes to SDLSETUP: SDLSETUP is now "menu driven"! This makes it much easier to use, but it may be slower on older machines. Menus are displayed showing the items available to be customized. You can select specific items instead of having to scroll through each item in a section. After each selection you will return to the menu so you can make another selection or continue on to the next section. If you make a menu selection then decide you don't want to specify the item after all, you can press Esc to go on the the next section, or CR to return to the the current menu. Some menu selections will have more than one item that can be customized; e.g. the SORT options are grouped together. The menu will be displayed again after the last of these items unless you press Esc. Because of the branching, the menu method could be agonizingly slow on older machines and if using DOS 2.x. However, being able to select only those items you want to change should make it faster overall. Because of certain problems in the older versions of DOS, DOS 2.x is longer specifically supported. If it -10- works under your 2.x fine, but it is impractical to fix anything that doesn't. SDLCONFG is a shorter version of SDLSETUP. SDLCONFG skips all of the defaults that you can set in the environment with the SET SDL= command. Use SDLCONFG if all you want to do is change any of those few defaults that cannot be specified on the command line. Several users have complained that the red highlighted key letters were hard to see. You could always select no highlighting in SDLSETUP, but now I have expanded that so that you can specify a color you would like to see. If you specifically select either Automatic or Color for the monitor, then you will get a second prompt for the color you want. This color option may not work exactly as expected if you are using another program to set the overall colors of your display. You may have to experiment to obtain the effect that you want. The new "skip over perf" feature of label printing depends on the number of rows of files you have selected for tiny print in SDLSETUP. Additional selections have been made available to cover a wider selection of printers. DR DOS is now supported by SDLSETUP. A separate set of setup BATch files is in the subdirectory (or separate ZIPped file) DRDOS in the registered version. To run SDLSETUP under DR DOS, copy the BATch files in DRDOS over the ones of the same name in the original MS DOS version. ***************************************************************** Some special perks for registrations and upgrades! FREE labels! With each new registration you may select one unit of labels FREE. Pay only the $2 S&H charge. Sorry, the upgrade prices are so low that they do not include labels. Rebate for your purchased shareware disk for new registrations! If you have purchased a MASDIR shareware disk from me, PC-SIG, The Public (software) Library, a user group, or any other authorized shareware distributor, send in the original MASDIR shareware disk and a copy of your receipt with your registration. As a token of appreciation for trying MASDIR you may deduct the price of the disk up to $3 from the registration fee of $19. You must include both the disk and the invoice showing payment. There is also extensive new documentation available both on disk and printed. As the documentation is completed it will be included in a file on the disk. Because of the increase in the size of the documentation to describe the new features, the price of the printed documentation had to be raised. However, the -11- surcharge for 3.5" diskettes has been reduced, and there has been a reduction in the registration fee. I hope you enjoy using the new features in MASDIR Version 5. Bob Stephan (408) 646-1899, The Cricket BBS (408) 373-3773, MOBYDISK on Genie, or 72357,2276 on CompuServe.