File Buddy 4.1 Read Me

File Buddy 4.1

This is an HTML version of the File Buddy 4.1 Read Me file. Please read through this entire document. I know it's not super exciting, but I've edited and supplemented several items, and it may save you and me time in the long run. Thanks.

68k and PowerPC versions now available!
What's new in version 4?: The Get Info Window; The File List Window; Cleaning; Finding Files; Miscellaneous
Latest Fixes
Bugs fixed since version 3.4.8
Known Problems in version 4.1
What the future holds
Registering File Buddy
Disclaimer
Acknowledgments
Contact Information
Obtaining the latest version

Overview

File Buddy is a general utility for working with files and folders. It can:

Obtain and set a wide range of file and folder information.
Find files using an extensive set of search criteria.
Find files containing specified resources.
Modify a batch of file names, e.g., remove ".txt" from several file names at once.
Rename a batch of files sequentially.
Create custom icons: from PICTs on the clipboard; from other icons; for folders; with blank icons; using only small icons.
Create aliases.
Create volume and folder inventories that can be compared to report new, deleted, and modified files and folders.
Find empty files and folders, duplicate files, unattached aliases, and unused preference files.
Rebuild the desktop, even on floppies.
Move and copy files.
Delete resource forks and data forks.
Erase files and unused disk space.

Note that all dragging features of File Buddy require that you have Macintosh Drag and Drop installed, either as an extension, or as a part of Mac OS versions 7.5 and above.

See Latest Fixes for a description of release version bugs that have been fixed since v3.4.8.

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68k and PowerPC native versions now available!

File Buddy 4.1 is available in both 68k and PowerPC native versions. For the moment I am not releasing a fat binary version. The 68k version will run on both processors and the speed difference does not seem to be that significant. I believe this is because File Buddy does not put heavy demands on the processor and the file list drawing code is not yet native. File Buddy does access the file system a lot, but disk accesses are not benefited significantly by PPC native code. I may change my position in the future when the list drawing code become native as well.

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What's New in 4.0

File Buddy has been completely rewritten in C++ for version 4.0 using Metrowerks CodeWarrior. Versions prior to 4.0 were written in THINK Pascal. It may not look much different, but this has provided a much better code base, which has facilitated better debugging and easier feature implementation. It was also the most significant hurdle to creating a version that is PPC native.

File Buddy 4.0 sports the following improvements over 3.4.8:

4.0 26 March 1997

Get Info

Get Info windows are no longer modal, but obey the following rules: If File Buddy is not running and you drop items on it for the Get Info, the window is a movable modal, and you can have only one. When you dismiss it, File Buddy quits. If File Buddy is already open when you access the Get Info window, it is modeless, and you can have more than one.
You can copy an icon to the current item in the Get Info window by dragging the icon you are copying from the Finder to the icon in the Get Info window.
There is a File Path popup in the Get Info window.
For users of Macintosh Drag and Drop: You can copy the creator and/or file type of a file in the finder to a file in the Get Info window by dragging the file into the appropriate area in the Get Info window.

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File List Window

While in the file list window, typing the Delete key removes items as before, but now typing Command-delete moves them to the Trash.
Clicking a heading (other than Icon) in a file list window with the option key down sorts the list in the reverse of the normal order.
Multiple file list windows are now supported.
Previous versions of File Buddy saved the state of the file list window when it was closed, for use the next time it was opened. Because you can now open more than one file list window at a time, File Buddy 4.0 saves the state of the frontmost file list window when you select Capture Defaults from the List menu.
There is a New List Window command in the List menu. It opens an empty file list window into which you can drag items from the finder or other file list windows.
You can now drag items out of file list windows as well into them. If you drag an item from one file list window to another, it is moved to the new window, unless you hold down the option key at the start or end of the drag, in which case it is copied into the destination window. (See note below about this.)
In the file list window, when the Name, Modified, Created, or Where fields are not wide enough, File Buddy will condense the text and the tuncate it only if still necessary.
The Special Popup in the file list window contains new items: Rename Sequentially..., Erase Files, Compare Contents, and Add to Get Info Creator Menu. The online help describes each of these.
The contents of a file list can be saved to recreate the list later. The entire list or just the currently selected items can be saved. Use the Save submenu of the list menu for either of these, or the new Save List button in the file list window to save the entire list. If any of the items could not be found when attempting to reconstruct the list, you can still display the others.
For users of Macintosh Drag and Drop: Clicking and dragging an unselected item in a file list window deselects the current selection, selects the item clicked, and begins the drag.

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Cleaning

All of the commands to Update, Rebuild, and Replace the desktop now rebuild the desktop on floppies, but they all work the same way since floppies have a desktop file, not a desktop database file. Specifically, they replace it. More accurately, File Buddy gets rid of the old one and gets the finder to create a new one. All files on the floppy should be closed when you rebuild the desktop on a floppy.
The Unattached Aliases window has two new buttons: Show, and Find... The Show button tells the Finder to find the alias. The Find button loads any infomation that can be determined about the alias' old target into the Find window in the manner of the Find Similar command. From there you can search for possible targets and drag the best choice from the file list window into the target area (upper right corner) of the Unattached Aliases window to reconnect the selected aliases.
After finding or marking duplicate files, the duplicate file group numbers are now drawn in the far left column, so they no longer replace the files' icons.
The items found by Scan For Empties..., Check Aliases..., and Scan Preferences Folder are reported in similar windows, each with a list. The Check Aliases... window differs only cosmetically from its previous incarnation. You can't drag out of these windows...yet. And despite the fact that the Name heading above the lists in these windows is underlined, you can't resort the list by any other heading.
There are two changes to Scan Preferences Folder. First, it gives you the option of making it a little more accurate by building a list of all creator signatures used by applications and control panels on all local disks in addition to the tests previously performed. Second, you can specify a cutoff time period that tells File Buddy to ignore preference files that have been modified recently. The default is one month.
There are two new items in the Cleaning menu (for lack of a better place to put them) called Create Inventory... and Compare Inventories.... The first creates a file that contains an inventory of the contents of a selected disk or folder. Everything is inventoried: files and folders, visible and invisible, everything, though not in a format the user can read. When File Buddy compares two inventories of the same disk or folder, it reports the results in four text files, named Deleted Items, Modified Items, Moved Items, and New Items, placing the files in a folder that it creates. A full pathname is written to the appropriate file for each deleted, modified, moved, and new item. You can use inventories to learn exactly what items an installer places on your disk, or just to look at how much gets modified during the day. To see exactly what items an installer places on your disk, just run an inventory immediately before and after the install.
After comparing two inventories, a list can be created containing the items in any of the Modified Items, Moved Items, or New Items files.
After finding duplicate files, the list is marked as sorted by one of the duplicate criteria instead of by the group number. Strictly speaking it is correctly sorted by both the marked criteria and group number.

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Finding Files

You can now paste multiple names in the Find window's name field when using the extended options. The maximum is 255 characters and the names must be separated by returns. If the text to be pasted is longer than 255 characters or there are more than 31 characters between any 2 returns, the paste won't fly and you'll just get a beep.
Changed the meaning of the checkmarks in the folders list of the Find window. In prior versions, all folders in the list were used in a search if the checkbox was checked. Checkmarks next to individual folders denoted that their subfolders should be used the same way. A checkmark still denotes the folder and its subfolders should be used. Folders not checked are now ignored completely. The lists are limited to 15 folders.
A Find can now be canceled any time before the file list window appears.
For users of Macintosh Drag and Drop: You can now drag a folder into the Find window's folder list. Dragging an item into the Find window anywhere else is the same as selecting it with the Find Similar command.

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Miscellaneous

A file path popup menu is available for file list items and get info items. For file list items, click the item with the option key down. For an item in a Get Info window, click in the area where the path appears (The "Where:" area). In either case, the popup menu that appears lists the path items from target itself down to the volume on which it resides. Selecting an item from the menu takes you to that item, which lets you go to the target or any of its parent folders. This is consistant with the popup menu you get in finder windows when you Command-click in the title.
All menus are installed now at launch, even if File Buddy will quit after the current task, such as handling a modal Get Info window.
The old Extras menu has been renamed Info, and the Options menu has been renamed Special.
There is a Compare Files... command in the File menu. It does a simple byte-for-byte comparison of the data and resource forks of the two files and reports if they are the same or not. File Buddy will not open the files and display the differences. Note that because the resource fork of a file is essentially a mini database, two files can have functionally identical resource forks that appear different, though in practice this is not very likely. Two files selected in a file list can be compared using the Compare Contents command in the Special popup menu.
Several dialogs that were modal are now movable modal. Some of these may even become modeless at some point, but for many of File Buddy's operations, it's preferable that no changes be allow to any files during the operation, and modality helps guarantee that.
When a disk is inserted while a drive selection dialog is up, the disk is now mounted and shows up in the menu of available disks.
For users of Macintosh Drag and Drop: Text can now be dragged out of the File Buddy Help window, either into the Finder, or a document opened in a word processor that supports Macintosh Drag and Drop. Styles are currently lost.

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Latest Fixes

4.1 27 June 1997

The progress bar reflects skipped files when using the Replace Different option.
Rebuilding the desktop is now an option for an action on a dropped disk. Added this to make it easier to rebuild a floppy's desktop by dropping it onto File Buddy. The default keys to hold down are Command + 'd', but you can set them to your preference. Also added Rebuild Desktop button to the dialog that lets you choose the action to take on dropped items, and the Balloon Help has been corrected for that dialog.
The File Path Popup Menus topic now works in the help window.
Fixed several minor bugs.
First PPC native version.
Some users have reported crashing when clicking on the little magnifying glass in the lower left corner of some of the file directory boxes. I have never been able to reproduce the problem, but it seems to have been traced to an extension called the FaxAction Extension.

4.0.4 23 May 1997

There is now an Erase Files command in the file list special popup menu.
A DebugStr() call unintentionally left in at the end of the code that erases the unused space on a disk would cause a crash if no debugger were installed. Fixed.
The first time a file list window was opened after a new prefs file was created, the default button marker (little black line under the default button) appeared as a gray line spanning the width of the window. This has been fixed.
File directory dialogs used to select applications now display aliases to applications as well as actual applications.

4.0.3 17 May 1997

When the registration form was saved to disk, the file was not closed until File Buddy quit. This has been fixed.
Some machines would crash when doing a Find that did not use a name in the search criteria. This has been fixed.
Moving a folder to a different volume would sometimes copy without deleting the original. This has been fixed.
The code to save a file list to a text file has been reconnected.
The drag & drop applications for setting file info have not been rewritten yet. Those created by 4.0.3 will show a little more current information, but will still not be able to recognize a valid 4.x serial number. This will hopefully be addressed soon.
File and free disk space erasing are new to version 4.0.3.
Fixed a bug that would cause finds using More Options and searching for exactly one file name with the "is any of" setting to ignore the name.

4.0.2 12 April 1997

Version number is correct in registration form.
Fixed some minor bugs when pasting a picture that isn't square into an icon in the Get Info window.
Registration will now persist after quitting.
Some searches that shouldn't report folders would report them anyway. This has been fixed.
The Erase commands have been removed from the Cleaning menu. The code is written but is not currently "hooked up" since it hasn't been tested enough. They will be back soon.

4.0.1 27 March 1997

There were beta alerts that prevented access to the registration form. These should have been removed as of version 4.0b4, when registration was allowed, but I forgot the alerts and no one reported them. Now they're gone.

Bugs in 4.0b6 that are fixed in 4.0

There were some problems when doing certain name-based searches such as "starts with any of". That code has been reworked. It now works correctly, and in many cases is faster.
Moving a file to a different volume-essentially a copy followed by a delete-was only copying and not deleting the original. This has been fixed.
Cancelling a resource file search while the Cancel button was the default would not really cancel. This has been fixed.
Fixed a bug that would result in folders being reported in certain searches intended to find only files.
Fixed a bug in setting the label of a file using the Get Info window.
Select All now works correctly in the file directory dialog when it is available.
Fixed a bug in the Find Empties reporting window that caused a crash if you marked something to not be reported and then trashed something else.

Bugs in 3.4.8 that are fixed in 4.0

The get file directory boxes with finding capability now look for extra space added at the bottom when using SuperBoomerang's Get Info and clean up the info when expanding.
Canceling out of making a folder icon in the Get Info window is now respected.
The Find Duplicates code has been rewritten. There were some problems with it that are now fixed.
Fixed an apparently long-standing bug when restricting a find to or excluding specific folders using the list in the Find window. This feature now works.
Sped up searches that use the Intersect with Existing List option.
When viewing the results of a Preferences folder scan, Command-"." and the escape key were clicking the button to trash the current file. This has been fixed. Now the window goes away.
Fixes a bug that could happen when expanding the Find window while it's spanning 2 monitors.

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Known Problems in File Buddy 4.1

Some users have reported crashing when clicking on the little magnifying glass in the lower left corner of some of the file directory boxes. I have never been able to reproduce the problem (I've tried on a Centris 610, IIsi, 8500, and a 180c), though it now seems it is a problem with the FaxAction Extension.

After dragging a file from one file list window to another file list window without the option key down, File Buddy moves the file to the other window. Or so it should. Seems it copies on some computers. I don't know why.

On some Macs, if you drag a file from a file list window to a location in the Finder that is on a different volume than the item, the Finder will put up an alert about error -1,708 and do nothing. On others it will copy the file. If the file and the destination folder are on the same volume, the Finder will move the file to that location. I'm still looking into the problem.

When you drag text out of the File Buddy Help window, the style information gets lost.

It has been reported that the help window can't be accessed from the Apple Guide menu if you are using Apple Guide 2.1. This is a bug in that version of Apple Guide. The problem does not show up in versions 2.0.2 or 2.1.1.

The drag & drop applications for setting file info have not been rewritten yet. They will work correctly but are not able to recognize a valid 4.x serial number. I plan to address this by version 4.2.

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What the Future Holds:

There are a few things I wanted for 4.1 that didn't quite make it, but will appear sometime. They are:
A better multiple file select dialog.
Full support for dragging files out of a file list window.
Updated code for the drag & drop applications that file info.
A Windows menu.
Other stuff.

Registering File Buddy

File Buddy is shareware. Shareware is try-before-you-buy-software. It is not use-it-as-long-as-you-like-for-free software. That kind of software is called freeware. If you like it and use it more than 10 days, please read the document Registering/Upgrading FB and register.

Disclaimer:

I have endeavored to make File Buddy as reliable and stable as possible. Nevertheless, it undoubtedly has bugs of which I am currently unaware. I don't know of any bad ones, but just about every piece of software with more than 20 lines of code has bugs. I use File Buddy all the time. However, you--as I--use it at your own risk.

PLEASE contact me if you find any bugs, unexpected behavior, or have a suggestion for a new feature. I welcome ideas, but please keep in mind I can't use them all, or File Buddy will need over 4 megs of disk space, and the interface will suffer terribly. If you've used Word 6, or heaven forbid, Microsoft Exchange, you know what I mean. Only features which would have wide appeal can make it in.

Well, that's all for now folks. PLEASE let me know if you find any bugs, so I can fix them asap.

To those upgrading from 3.x I hope you find 4.1 an improvement.

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Acknowledgments

I want to thank the people who registered a prior version of File Buddy for their financial and moral support. Without their appreciation, File Buddy 4.1 would never have been done.

Thanks to those users who reported bugs so I could fix them and you could have a better product.

Thanks to everyone on CompuServe that helped me with technical questions, now too numerous to mention. Thanks to everyone who tested some version of File Buddy to see if I had been successful in fixing a bug I couldn't reproduce.

Thank you,

Laurence Harris

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Contact Information:

Laurence Harris
17 Old University Station Rd
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1572

919-933-9595

Web: <http://www.skytag.com/>
FTP: <ftp://ftp.skytag.com/skytag.com/>

E-mail addresses:

CompuServe: 76150,1027
Internet: <76150.1027@compuserve.com> or
<larry@skytag.com>

A few e-mail requests:

Please do not e-mail files without asking first, and if I okay a file, please send it to <skytag@mindspring.com>.
E-mail me jusdiciously. Since the same guy designs the software, writes the software, processes registrations, and answers e-mails, the more e-mail I get, the less time I have for other activities like writing code.

Obtaining the latest version

Please try standard info-mac sites or on-line services to obtain the latest versions of File Buddy, RegisterFB, or FindFile Chooser before downloading from my site, as there are limitations to the amount that can be downloaded from mine. Specifically, my web hosting account allows 500 Mb of downloading each month from my web site. After that I am charged $0.12/Mb. During the month of May, 1997, people transferred 6,039.6 Mb, with the additional 5,539.6 Mb costing me $664.75 over and above my normal monthly fee. I just can't afford that. My web site was intended to provide a place where File Buddy could be downloaded if users couldn't find it anywhere else. I will try to post the latest File Buddy anywhere I can, including one or more info-mac sites. I'll will monitor the stats each month and pull it as the downloads approach the limit.

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