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Text File | 1993-10-14 | 11.9 KB | 266 lines

************************************************************************** * POCKETD PLUS v3.1 Readme File * ************************************************************************** The older PocketD v1.67 has been in circulation since January '92, and has 200 registered users in the US, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Israel, Dubai & Australia. During the last 18 months it received: * The "BEST NEW UTILITY 1992" award by the top US Shareware catalog PsL * 8 Excellent reviews in magazines, totalling over 5500 words of review text and earning 5 stars out of 5 in most assessment categories. >>>>>>>> WHAT IS IT ? PocketD Plus is first and foremost a small command-line file manager, with a separate and optional menu-driven interface. Its purpose is to provide the user with a highly productive tool for day-to-day disk housekeeping. However it can be many things, depending on what you want. It has been designed to be small enough for any DOS or Windows user to want to use it on their PC, even if they only use 2% of its facilities. >>>>>>>> WHAT FACILITIES DOES IT OFFER ? PocketD Plus comes as 2 key programs: D.EXE This is small flexible color directory listing program and an exceptionally powerful DOS utility. It allows the user to quickly and easily carry out automated tasks that would be either too difficult or impossible by other means. D.EXE has a staggering 220+ options and sub-options, including filename, string and archive searching (supporting ZIP, ARC, PAK, PKA, ZOO, ARJ, LZH & even SFX), analyse EXE/COM files, file viewing, advanced copy (23 options), execution and display template(s) (50 parameters), sorting, color user menus, support for all screen sizes, advanced wildcards, user-defined parameters (37), many display formats, barchart summary, directory and archive browse, recursive disk analysis, environment variable analysis & much much more. The executable D.EXE is only 31k in size (registered version 29.6k), with an optional 107k of indexed on-line help. MENUD.EXE This is the new (37k) front-end to D.EXE introduced with v3.0, allowing users to gain access to D.EXE's extensive command-line power through the comfort of a menu-driven system. D.EXE was an innovative DOS tool, MENUD.EXE is an innovative menu-driven system! MenuD's 60 menus and over 400 options not only allow the user to build D.EXE command-lines, but also provide a compound description of the operation in English! MenuD fulfils the following roles: (1) Menu-driven File Management For users who want to gain access to D.EXE facilities without learning the command-line syntax. (2) A Tutorial For PocketD For users who want a fast way to learn D.EXE's command-line syntax. MenuD demonstrates which options can be used together. (3) A Utility Factory No need to search for that special utility that you want. MenuD lets you create it! The BAT files created by MenuD are also automatically commented. >>>>>>>> WHY MIGHT I NEED POCKETD PLUS? 1. Use it as a color-coded directory listing program. If you are frustrated by DOS 6.0's failure to allow files to be differentiated by color, then this is for you. PocketD (D.EXE) provides more power to control color and far more tailoring and display format options than any other program. Combine this with the extensive options for choosing files (such as non-executable, today's and hidden etc..), and PocketD becomes indispensable. 2. Use it as a tool for managing your hard disk. PocketD provides exceptional power for performing both simple operations, such as daily backups, and complex tasks such as disk cataloguing. PocketD will replace almost any file utility you might already have and, in most cases, will do a much better job. 3. Use it for managing a network. PocketD was designed for a network environment! It can perform such a wide range of useful tasks that you should not be without it, and provides many facilities for monitoring disk usage, removing temporary files, managing backups, manipulating accounts etc.. PocketD's generality of design really comes into its own with network management. (See the file NETWORK.TXT). 4. Use it on your laptop. At 29k in size (registered version, minimum installation), PocketD is a laptop user's dream. It is small enough to fit on anyone's machine, and will allow you to dispose of many other utilities, leaving you with a single consistent utility for all tasks, rather than a hotch-potch of cumbersome and incompatible programs. >>>>>>>> I ALREADY HAVE A BUNCH OF UTILITIES. WHY BOTHER WITH POCKETD? Are you nervous about your BACKUPs? Programs such as NORTON, PC-TOOLS and FLEXIBAC will irresponsibly backup a corrupted 4k file over an uncorrupt 100k previous version without a squeak. PocketD will let you fine-tune exactly how cautious your backup should be. It will also tell you exactly what is going on, and warn you if the system clock is wrong! If you want a secure, fast and convenient tool for backing up your daily work, then PocketD is ideal. Are you sure that your existing utilities can do all that you need? Have you ever needed to do any of the following? Copy and optimally pack files to multiple disks? Look for a file containing a particular piece of text? Reverse an accidental copy into the wrong subdirectory? Move a subdirectory tree to another part of the disk? Search for a file in any disk or archive using multiple criteria? Look at the contents of an SFX archive before running it? Have your machine remind you when your next backup is due? Have a program that could tell you how big your subdirectories are? Test whether the correct disk is in a drive? Automate commonly carried out operations? Add questions to your AUTOEXEC.BAT or batch files? Create a formatted audit file for all your machines? Scan your hard disk to check that every byte is readable? PocketD's flexible design will do these things and countless other tasks. >>>>>>>> WHAT MAKES POCKETD SPECIAL? The key feature that makes PocketD exceptional is its power to mix and match its enormous range of features to perform almost any task. Many utility packages provide "set-piece" facilities to perform particular tasks. PocketD will often be able to provide the same functionality by combining options in appropriate combinations, but with the added advantage that PocketD can go further and provide a much larger superset of facilities, which can be exactly tailored to the user's needs. For example: PocketD provides ARCHIVE support Since PocketD can see a file inside an archive, the rest of its general purpose facilities can be brought to bear. How many other archive handlers could do the following? (a) Take all ZIP archives on drive A: and uncompress each into its own subdirectory on the current drive. (e.g. DIET14.ZIP becomes DIET14\*.*) D A:.ZIP [md $n//PKUNZIP $w $n\]R (b) Delete all the files in the current subdirectory that are also present within an archive in the current directory (including ZIP, ARJ, LZH, ARJ, ZOO, ARC, PAK, PKA and Self-extracting archives created by PKZIP, ARJ, LHA or LHARC). D [D $f/hzz]ZRAZ reporting each deletion, or... D [D $f/hzz:=$d=$s]ZRAZ checking first that date & size of file is the same before deletion. (c) Search the current drive looking inside all .ZIP archives for files with the extension .DOC or with a name containing the string "READ", that were modified during the last 5 days and uncompress them into the current directory. D /WZ[zp]:-5 *READ* .DOC [PKUNZIP $p$B $f]R (d) Show how much space would be needed to uncompress the archive in the current directory which uncompresses to the largest size (not necessarily the biggest archive, after taking into account the cluster size of the current drive!), also reporting how much space is actually available. D /ZDUKss [$s bytes needed ($Rk available)] (option "Z" scans archives, "D" shows only archives/dirs, "U" actual space used, "ss" sort by size, "K" shows only first sorted item.) From this it can be seen that almost anything might be possible, e.g. automatic VIRUS checking of files in SFX and other archives, on-line viewing or running of files in archives, checking whether files in one archive are present in another, etc... See ARCVIEW.BAT and UNARC.BAT on the release disk for further good archive examples. >>>>>>>> WHAT ABOUT THE SIMPLER DAY-TO-DAY UTILITIES? PocketD can also enrich even simple utilities, providing that extra functionality to make them that much more useful. For example: Take the simple utility WHEREIS. The PocketD release disk has a pre-prepared batch file to do this. WHEREIS filename is available in most users' utility repertoires, but PocketD will let you expand this, for example: WHEREIS *A*=D* /c A: "Search for filenames with an 'A' followed later by a digit and copy them to drive A: (giving the user the chance to view each file, and warning if the file already exists on A:, whether it is bigger, smaller, older, newer, MUCH older etc..)" WHEREIS /TQ "Search for all the files I created today and provide a scrolling list from which I can choose files to view" >>>>>>>> JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTER OF NONE? NO!... PocketD, almost without exception, provides facilities that are individually superior to those provided by other dedicated programs. For example, only 10% of PocketD's options are devoted to file copy/move, but there is no program (at the time of writing) that comes close to PocketD's copy power. Even heavyweight copy specialists, with over three times the code size, do not come near. Finally, PocketD gains substantially from its use of templates, which allows the user to construct exotic combinations of nested calls that make almost any operation possible. This flexibility makes PocketD one of the few programs that can provide a viable substitute for a command line programming language. >>>>>>>> WHAT IS THE EASIEST WAY TO LEARN HOW TO USE POCKETD? PocketD is primarily a command-line tool, but the menu-driven MENUD.EXE provides the easiest way to explore its facilities. MENUD.EXE allows the user to pick options from menus and see the equivalent command line constructed, with a full description of the command in English. The user can then run it using the F3 key, or save it as a fully commented BAT file using F2. The user can also run "DEMO" for a quick demonstration of D.EXE. Having grasped the basic rules for constructing D.EXE command-lines, the next step is to use the on-line guide for examples of using D.EXE to perform particular tasks. This is accessed by typing: D /?? from the DOS prompt. The user can also examine the pre-prepared BAT utilities provided on the release disk for extra inspiration. Finally the user can always register PocketD or PocketD Plus(!), and receive the 100-page mini-manual, jam packed with many detailed and instructive worked examples not provided in the on-disk documentation.