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- SFM Notes and Revisions
-
- If you haven't already noticed, this program is written as
- a contest entry. I am put it on GEnie as two separate files
- in order to avoid your having to load one huge file when
- many of you won't necessarily want the source code. As per the
- contest rules I must make full source code available and may not
- request donations. This is OK with me, especially since you
- have already invested a fair amount to download these files. I
- hope you find the program worth the investment.
-
- The archive file names are SFM.ARC and SFMSRC.ARC.
-
- If you have taken the time to also download the source code
- I am confident that you will find something of value there. There
- is quite a bit of hard to find information concerning DOS incorporated
- in that code. There is also a "technical document" included with the
- source code that I hope helps with understanding the general layout
- of SFM.
-
- As with all programs I put into the public domain I would like to
- hear from anyone who has an opinion concerning this program or any other
- I have contributed. You may write to:
-
- David Steiner
- 2035 J Apt. #6
- Lincoln, NE 68510
- (402) 475-0601
-
- or send me mail on GEnie [D.STEINER].
-
- Finally I would like to say that I have no qualms about persons
- using portions of this code in programs they write, just give me some
- credit. However, I must make it clear that I don't want to see
- versions of this program that have been altered by other people.
- You may change the program to suit your needs however you wish, but
- do not redistribute such altered versions of SFM. If you make a change
- that you consider to be for the better, please write me and perhaps send
- a disk containing the altered version if the change is major. In such a
- case I will make the 'official' revision and distribute update files
- (giving credit to the individual who made the change).
-
- The reasons behind the above restrictions are many but I will
- highlight a couple. My first concern is that someone may make an
- alteration and not realize the full extent of the changes made.
- Considering the power invested in SFM such a situation can be
- detrimental to a system's disks (I know, I once overwrote my hard
- disk's FAT with one from a RAM disk while testing some 'minor' changes).
- The second reason I will cover is simply that I have a starving ego to feed
- and wouldn't consider someone 'going over my head' to be terribly nice
- on their part. Don't hold that against me, we folks who donate to the
- public domain have little else to keep us going.
-
- Hope you find SFM useful,
- David Steiner
-
- REVISIONS:
-
- As I said, this program was a contest entry. Imagine my chagrine
- when I noticed a bug in the program a few days after being sent off to
- CPCUG.
-
- The bug was relatively minor, and the only real one I have found
- so far. When SFM was copying files from a root directory to somewhere
- else it would skip the first file in the directory, if it were marked.
- It had to do with the initialization of a variable in the CopyEntries
- procedure it was:
-
- i := NextEntry( w, 0 );
-
- when it should have been simply:
-
- i := 0;
-
- The change is made in this version so you need not worry about it, I
- however, still wonder if it is to be considered a point against me
- by the judges of the contest.
-
- VERSION 1.01
-
- There was a very minor bug that I fixed concerning what happens
- when you change disks during a copy. If you didn't have the destination
- disk loaded in one of the windows you would get a message saying that
- joined or substituted drives were not supported. It was related to
- a stupid assumption I made when I wrote the disk changing routine,
- ChangeCopyDisk.
-
- I also updated it to keep track of how many files it is copying
- during a copy operation. It now prints the Reading from and Writing
- to messages with the number of the file in addition to the name.
- This is nice for letting you know how much further SFM has to go before
- completing a copy.