Slicer is a utility designed to carve up large text files into a series of smaller text files (slices), with serialized names. For instance, a file named
Very Big File
might be sliced into
Very Big File.001
Very Big File.002
Very Big File.003
and so on. These files are created at the same folder level as the original file.
Who would use Slicer? It is useful in case you have a Very Big File which you need to send to someone using a non-Mac computer. If the file is bigger than a single floppy and the non-Mac user does not have a Mac-compatible compression program to restore segmented archives, Slicer provides a solution.
There are four Slicer variables which you can alter by launching Slicer while holding down the mouse button. The first is the size in K (1024 bytes) that you want the big file sliced into. The second is the four-character text creator type you want assigned to the file. Some common choices for creator types are
QED1 Qued
MACA MacWrite
MSWD Microsoft Word
ttxt TeachText
The third setting is for the buffer size (in K) used in reading the file. As shipped, Slicer is set for a buffer size of 16K. If you greatly increase this, you should probably increase the memory partition allocated to Slicer (default is 100K). In theory a larger buffer should give you faster performance, but in fact it’s not so easy to figure out. Running time depends not just on the buffer size, but also on RAM cache settings and other variables. You are welcome to experiment.
The fourth setting allows you to specify that slices end at end of line boundaries. This is provided for the convenience of those who are slicing up carriage return (or carriage return/linefeed) delimited database files for export. Using this setting also makes the resulting text fragments more readable, if you’re slicing up big text files into smaller chunks for a bulletin board.
Notes:
• Slicer is free and may be freely redistributed, as long as this documentation accompanies it.
• Make sure you have enough room on your disk to contain Slicer’s output.
• You can cancel a Slicer session by holding down the Command and period keys while Slicer is processing.
• Slicer is uncooperative with other applications in MultiFinder and System 7 environments: it hogs all the CPU time, but is quite fast. It works fine with MultiFinder and System 7 — it’s just not friendly to its coworkers.
• Make sure your source file name is 27 characters or less in length since the Mac won’t allow filenames longer than 31 characters, and Slicer adds four characters to each output filename. If your filename is longer than 27 characters, Slicer will truncate it to the first 27 characters.
• Slicer automatically overwrites any existing files with conflicting names (in the previous example a file with the name “Very Big File.001” would be overwritten when Slicer processed “Very Big File”), so if you have valuable files with “.nnn” suffixes, you should move them out of the folder in which Slicer will do its work.
• Slicer formats its output filenames with a three-digit extension so try to avoid creating more than 999 slices or the numbering will turn weird.
Slicer was written by Pete Johnson in September, 1992, based on a suggestion by John Alcock.
Version History
---------------
• Version 1.0 was released Sep. 12, 1992, or maybe a day or two later. I do not have notes on release dates or new features of the next two updates, but they added three-number output file extensions, ability to abort with a mouse click, more configuration options and some other niceties.
• Version 1.0.3 was released Oct. 17, 1992. It added the ability to slice on line breaks and changed behavior from “abort if mouse is clicked” to “abort if Command-period is typed.”
• Version 1.0.4 was released Oct. 18, 1992. It fixed the configuration dialog “slice at end of line” switch, which would not remember toggling from on to off.
