  QuickShell V1.0

By Alfredo Milani-Comparetti and Giovanni Tummarello

Introduction

Feature list

Program status (registering )

Main concepts and commands

Where do I get updates/support? (web page)


Introduction

Even though we will do whatever possible to keep this program small in size and in memory usage, QuickShell is an extremely powerful tool, especially designed to come handy right when you need it, at the touch of a key.

In a few words: we had to write QuickShell because we needed it and believed that today (end of 1997) there is no such a small in size and handy software that allows extreme speed and power in organizing your computer files. All this with all the good solid programming that is in this product.

Solid programming primarily means safety for your data and overall stability.

This also means that QuickShell will run and behave correctly with virtually any configuration of Windows 95, NT and the forthcoming Windows 98 (or whatever the name will be). We also put a special attention in the user interface, designed for the easiest use and power and yet close enough to the standard Windows 95 interface so that most users will be able to perform all their needs without even having to read the manual.

The modular programming used in this software will allow a lot of possible future enhancements and commit ourselves in providing them as often as possible to registered users for free.

For a list of features, click here.


feature_list
Features list

*	Copy, Delete, Move, Rename (new : exclusive multiple rename facility !) , change file attributes. All the standard operations made easy and intuitive by the 2 lists interface. Also do advanced operations like multiple renaming with pattern matching and reformatting.
*	Filter your file selection by any extension, sort upwards or downwards by size, name, creation date or comment all with a single click
*	Total support for the standard describe extension (great to easily comment your files before storing them and so on)
*	Exclusive QUICKGO system *TRY IT* just press the right mouse button in the file column and see how easy it is to browse your HD just by moving the mouse)
*	Navigator interface (bookmark your favorite or most used HD places), press BACK or FORWARD.
*	Native ZIP and RAR support!! Treat ZIP files like standard directories: create, copy, move, delete, etc... Also supports multiple volume RAR files.
*	Built in native high quality support for:  Text files or general “as text” view! Read files with NO size or format limitation (E.G. 2000 lines by 2000 columns) wrap long lines, view as HEX file dump (future enhancements for HEX editing available soon), select, copy to clipboard, print in any viewing mode, unique search mode. View ANYTHING as text file as well!! Nothing will stop it! Look at EXE files or ZIP files as if  they were text. New : also includes editing. JPEG - BMP, AVI and other common graphic formats supported.  Midi, Wave, Vox Support (Vox is the famous telephony standard voice format used in most telephony cards (DIALOGIC TM)).
*	Advanced Multithreaded structure works for you while you use Quickshell (see how the directory size appears while you’re still able to work with files), also spawn multiple simultaneous shell operations.
*	Utilities ! Edit MP3 tags, install network drives, uninstall applications right from Quickshell ! More added at every release.
*	Autoload QuickShell at startup and have it always ready at the touch of a user definable key (HOTKEY). Minimize QuickShell with the speed of an ESC.
*	Great care for register users ! they always get notified the same very day the a new version of QuickShell is released. Since all new version have several new features and utilites and always come free to register users, by registering you will see your purchase increase in value as time passes ! See the registration page for more details !
Here are some basic concepts that you should know to use QuickShell at its most.


program_status
Program Status

Thanks for your interest in QuickShell ! If you read this text you are probably (we hope  ) considering to purchase our software, so here is some extra information and reasons why doing so :

Shareware?

This is not free software. The unregistered version is meant to be an evaluation version. It is not limited in its features. It will only limit you on the maximum number of files that you can see in a directory.  Feel free to use it as you want for a 30 day period and after that kindly requested to uninstall it unless you register it. Quickshell however will not enforce this 30 days period by performing stupid date checks.

We are pricing Quickshell at $29.50 USD.

For this price we offer you  an actual commercial product with serious support behind it (we usually reply to e-mail questions in no more than 2 days) and our registration service allows orders to be done 24h a day, via  1-800 number or secure web server.

But more than this, by registering you are actually supporting us in releasing usually a new version every 4-6 weeks , every time with some new features support !

The best part ? you will be entitled to all these new versions for free, and instantly notified upon their release, so that you can immediately download it from www.quickshell.com.

Just file management ? no way.. Quickshell`s is much more and as versions advance it will incorporate general utilities and productivity tools (possibly from version 1.07)

What if you register ?

Registration will immediately get to you an unlock key and will put you in the notify  list so that you know right away that a new version is out and which new features it implements.

Extra kind of licenses :

Other than the regular single user license, we also offer site licenses and VAR licenses.. Make your customers much happier with just few dollars invested in software !

Where to register ?

Please read our homepage for the online secure registration server and the other payment methods : Click here for Homepage and contact details


main_concepts
Main Concepts and commands

We really suggest to take a look at the following topics to make sure you use QuickShell`s features at their most:

-	Source and destination directory
-	Selecting and multiselecting
-	Copying and moving
-	Deleting
-	QuickGo
-	Filtering
-	Sorting
-	Zip Support
-	Internal viewers
-	Bookmarks
-	Navigator
-	advanced MULTIPLE renaming
-	Describing files


Source and destination directory

One of the main concepts in using QuickShell (if not the only) is the source and destination directory.

Whenever copying or moving files you will need to know which files (from where) and where to put them.

As you click on one of the 2 columns you will notice this clearly becomes selected (it gets a colored rectangle around it). Well this is the source directory... So, if you select some files here and then press copy, they will be copied to the other column. Quite easy, isn’t it?


Selecting and Multiselecting

Selecting files is as easy as clicking on them and moving your mouse while you keep the left button pressed will result in a multiple selection.

However with a little attention and the usage of the shift and ctrl keys you will be able to perform much more useful and targeted selections.

Keeping ctrl pressed while you select will cause the old selection NOT to be erased. In this way you can select files like 1 every 2 and so on. Also left clicking on a selected file while ctrl is pressed will deselect it.

Keeping shift pressed while selecting a file will select all the files between that very one and the previously selected one. Also use in conjunction with ctrl to make sure the old selection doesn`t get lost.


Copying and Moving

Copying and moving is as easy as selecting files and/or directories and then pressing the appropriate button. Files will be copied or moved to the destination directory. As a quick alternative to pressing the button you can use the copy or move commands by means of the right mouse button in the source directory.


Deleting files

Just select some files and/or directories and press delete button or select the delete command by pressing the right mouse button in the source directory.

You will be prompted before QuickShell actually deletes it (if you didn’t select not to).

Please note that in the current version this delete command does not wipe the files. To do this use the forthcoming wipe command.


QuickGo

QuickGo interface allows you to go to any place in your system as fast as possible.

Try it! Just press the right mouse button in either windows and select QuickGo. You will then have your drive list and once you enter in the drive you will see the directories in it in a tree like way.

QuickGo can also be accessed by pressing the QuickGo Icon [image] below each file list.


Filtering

There are a lot of situations where you might want to see only those files of a certain kind (let’s say you want to quickly copy all the JPGs into another directory). The easiest way to perform this is select *.jpg in the possible filters list (just click on the right side of the filter space to get the drop down list). Note that if you don`t see the filter you need in that list it means that there are no such files in the current directory.


Sorting

Which is the biggest folder in you hard disk? Which are the most recent files in this directory? These and many other questions can be quickly solved by using QuickShell sorting capabilities.

Just click on the file list column header (at the top of the file list) on either name, time, size or description and all the files will be sorted using that criteria.

You can change the sorting direction by clicking again on the same header. You will notice that the sort arrow has also changed direction.

Please note that if you select to sort by size and enter a new directory you will have to click on the header again (and therefore have QuickShell to resort) to have the folders ordered by actual size. This is due to the fact that it takes some time to retrieve the actual size of a folder (task that QuickShell performs using a multithreaded schema) and therefore at the time of the listing the size information about folders are not yet available. However once you see QuickShell has retrieved all the size information just click again on size and it will sort the folders as well as the files.


Zip Support

ZIP files are probably the most common file archives and QuickShell implements them in a really natural way. A Zip file is seen as a directory and therefore you can enter it, copy, move from/to, delete like any other true directory. To enter a zip file just double click on it like you would do on a folder. To create a new ZIP file select Create Dir/ZIP and mark the ZIP checkbox (or simply add the ZIP extension to the file).

Current limitations: in this version you cannot copy a file to a zip SUB folder: files will be stored in the zip anyway but will appear at the bottom level. You can’t, yet, copy or move files between ZIP files.


Internal Viewers & Supported Files

A number of file types are supported internally by QuickShell, this means (for example) that you will be able to play AVI/MIDI/WAV/VOX or to read text files or to see HEX code just by clicking on the file without the need for other applications. A file that has a supported extension is marked by QuickShell with the [image] icon.

The several internal viewers all have very simple commands that are, in the most cases, self-explanatory. However the text viewer is a bit more complicated.

While using the viewer, you can press a customizable hot key to get into fullscreen mode. This comes very handy to read text files in the best way even because the arrow keys as well as the pagedown and pageup key will work in the text viewer allowing quick scroll up and down of the text file (instead of just moving from file to file as it happens while not in fullscreen mode).


Text Viewer

By clicking on view as text or by selecting a file that is in text format you enter the text viewer. This is a high performance environment that is capable of showing in the most correct way even very odd text files or files that don’t have anything to do with text. There are 3 possible viewing modes :

Normal: lines are shown the correct way, according to the LF and CR structure in the text file. QuickShell will read all sort of CR, LF, CR/LF, LF/CR structure in the text file even if mixed. In this mode correct tabbing structure is also shown.

Wrapped: long lines will be wrapped so all the text will be visible in the current textview area. There will be no horizontal scrollbar in this mode. This mode is usually very handy when looking for text strings in binary files (that, obviously, do not have well behaved end of lines).

Hex: this is the classical HexDump mode that will show the values of 16 bytes and the correspondent ASCII output.. very used by programmers.

In each mode you will be able to :

-	select text by clicking and moving the mouse.
-	copy the current selection to clipboard or print it.
-	perform searches on the text.


Vox support

Vox files are ADPCM or PCM voice files used by DIALOGIC telephony cards. You will notice that the vox player allows/requires some user settings because there is no header in the VOX structure that can tell QuickShell what kind of files they are.


Bookmarks

Use the bookmarks as a quick way to access frequently used folders or files. To place a bookmark in the bookmark list just add bookmark from the bookmarks menu. The current active path will be stored as a bookmark. To remove bookmarks select edit bookmarks from the bookmarks menu.

One example of common use for this features is the desktop directory.

A lot of people store files and documents on the desktop. If you are one of them, you might want to bookmark the desktop (which is nothing but a normal directory usually in your windows directory, like c:\windows\desktop).


Utility Menu

The utility menu currently contains 2 items:

Refresh Drive List: use it to refresh the drive list in case you attached some drive to the system (like in a network configuration). You do not need to use this if you insert a new floppy disk or a new zip into a zip drive.

Uninstall: this is a quick way to uninstall existing programs in your system. By selecting this you will see the list of uninstallable software. It is basically a faster way for the standard install/uninstall facility. Comes handy when cleaning your Hard Disk.


Navigator toolbar

This menu can be positioned as you prefer by dragging it on its handle (the small segment on the very left). Its features are:

Back: unlike the parent button (that will just go to the parent directory), this will set the current source file column to the directory it was before it last changed.

Forward: in case you have used the Back button and not manually changed dir, this will take you back (or in this case forward) to the latest visited dir.

Refresh: this will cause a directory reread process and will therefore show any changes that happened in the dir.

Parent: will go to the parent directory.


QuickShell Support/Updates

To report bugs, get support, new versions, news etc... simply contact :

http :www.QuickShell.com

or e-mail : quickshell@quickshell.com

We will appreciate any suggestion to make this program exactly what you need!

Online registration is also available at the above address


Describing files

With QuickShell you have the support for the 4DOS file description system. This means that if your files are commented in this way, you will see the text at the side of the file (or in the file hint just moving the mouse over the filename).

You can add or modify file descriptions as well. Simply by choose a file and press the describe button.

Please note that all the comments are stored in the DESCRIPT.ION file. Do not delete or alter this file. Also note that if you are interested in the file comments while copying files, make sure you copy this file as well. If you copy this file on top of another descript.ion you will loose the comments that were stored in the old descript.ion. In other words the 2 files are not merged together in this current version.


File attributes

With QuickShell it is really easy to change the file attributes, simply select the file (or the files) and choose attributes from the central toolbar.

In the file list, a file will have the [image] icon on its right if it is readonly  or  the [image] icon if it is hidden.


Advanced Multiple renaming

Just by selecting more than one file and choosing Rename (from either menu) will get you into the multiple file renaming facility.

Even though this might seem a complex at first glance, we are rather confident there is no such a powerful way to rename files in any software out there .

There are 2 main fields :

FILEPATTERN : this will contain the pattern that will pick or “decompose” the original file names

RENAME TO : by typing here the right sequence you will be able to decide how the files will be renamed

By default the file patter is set to * and the rename to is set to [1] this way no renaming occours. This structure basically means : take everything (*) and put it in the  [1] space.

For example,  you wanted to rename the files the way Windows does, you would simply put  “copy of [1]” in the rename to field. Note how every time you change any field the resoult is immediatly shown in the box  below, but no actual renaming is performed until the “CHECK” button has been pressed and the OK button as well.

You might for example extract the filename and the extention and swap them.. see how easy it is

filepattern :   *.*

rename to  [2].[1]

comment : the content of the second asterix will be put where the [2] is , and the content of the first * where the [1] is

lets say you have file named   32PiCture_LiSa(new).jpeg and  wanted to rename it  to a more human form, a good choise would be

filepatter : *P*_*(*).*

rename to [4]_picture_[3]_[1].jpg

lower case checkbox : checked.

Lets say you have a lots of picture to rename but they are all from your summer vacation then a good choise would be :

filepattern *.*

rename to : summer[c3]_ok.[2]

this way all the pics will be renamed so that they all start with summerNN_ok.OLDEXTENSION  where NN is the number of the picture  in ascending order so that there is no collision.

[c3] means “counter with 3 digits. Counter only gets increased when a name collides with another name. Default value for the count is 4 digit, so inserting a [c] in the rename to patter will put a 4 digit counter.

You can also decide at which count the counter should start by selecting  the value in the apposite spinedit.