Directory Opus Alternative

[Varinia Swicegood]

AJI want a replacement for DirOpus since I think it's slow, badly

AJ> programmed, still 1.3-compatible and BIG! AJ> Does anybody know if there is an alternative with an AREXX port?Have you tried DiskMaster or SID? I think those two are the best PD/SW (etc)

available right now. If you want a copy of them, then you know where you can

get in contact with me... :-) The versions I have aren't the newest versions,

but they show what kind of program it is.*Patrik* Berglund FidoNet : 2:200/114.3

Malmoe, Sweden AmigaNet: 39:163/101.3

InterNet: p...@pb.ct.se

PGP 2.3a.2 key available on request... "When one is in a penalty box, tears are permitted" Picard

>available right now. If you want a copy of them, then you know where you can

>get in contact with me... :-) The versions I have aren't the newest versions,

>but they show what kind of program it is.

People at my user's group are always asking me what Directory Utility I

use, I always answer CLI and they stare at me.But really, what's wrong with CLI and Workbench? What am I missing?

I hope I'm not coming across as a jerk but what exactly do DirOpus,

CLImate, DiskMaster and SID do that the CLI-Workbench 2.1-AREXX combo

don't do?Don DeCosta The nice thing about sanity is VM/Nomad2

Do...@cup.portal.com you can lose it more than once Amiga/Imagine

Me too, me too! I've tried several of these utilities, and I've never found one

that I've actually used long-term (Well, I used one with 1.3, but then...). The

CLI and Workbench do most of the things I could want them to, although the

Workbench could be a bit faster and multi-task whilst doing disk operations (a la

Jazzbench...)

>Have you tried DiskMaster or SID? I think those two are the best PD/SW (etc)

>available right now. If you want a copy of them, then you know where you can

>get in contact with me... :-) The versions I have aren't the newest versions,

>but they show what kind of program it is.

MTool is great too. Does only a few things out of the box, but is quite

configurable... Also, it is the only one that can go in LhA archives like they

were directories, at least the only I know...

Available on Aminet.

--

Osma Ahvenlampi - oahv...@snakemail.hut.fi - finger or mail for PGP key

>But really, what's wrong with CLI and Workbench? What am I missing?

>I hope I'm not coming across as a jerk but what exactly do DirOpus,

>CLImate, DiskMaster and SID do that the CLI-Workbench 2.1-AREXX combo

>don't do?

At times it can be nice to see two directories at one time...

but I use shell for most everything (3.0). KingCon looks

like it will make things real nice. I just got that off

Aminet this weekend and haven't had much tome to play with it.

STeve

Save time. LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of time. I can flip between directories

and move/copy/protect/archive anything much faster and easier than with the

CLI alone. Much faster than with WB as well.I use and love the CLI. It's totally second nature to me. However, a

program like DirOpus definately has it's place too. It's sort of like

multitasking. Sometimes to first be convinced you may need to watch over

the shoulder of someone who's using it effectively. You'll say "gee, I

never knew how cool it CAN be."It's not merely "what" they can do, but with what efficiency and speed.

Then you've never used one properly. I could male your head spin using

DirOpus. Though I use the CLI and it's second nature to me, there's no

comparison in speed. And these days, the flexibility of programs like

DirOpus make them just about as flexible as the most convouted CLI commands.

It's a far cry from the early days of simple dir util commands.

>using Workbench and the CLI, especially with programs like KingCON and

>ToolManager running. Maybe these utilities are attractive for Amiga users who

>don't want to use the shell for whatever reason, but I personally really like

>the

>Amiga Shell, which is IMHO a lot nicer than the various UNIX shells in some w

a

>I highly recommend to everybody to just give a look at the work Sylvain

>Rougier and Pierre Carrette have done upon the concept of Browser, which is

>these utility Peter has written a long time ago.

I would definitely use the Find shell command from my own ExtraCmds21p

collection :), to select and act upon the files.In the simple case, I would just use protect with a pattern and the

all switch.--

Torsten Poulin Nielsen, stud.scient."When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said

DIKU (Dept. of Computer Science) in a rather scornful tone, it means

University of Copenhagen, Denmark just what I choose it to mean - neither

email: more nor less." - Lewis Carroll

This is where directory utilities become important... What if... for some

reason... The files you want to change don't happen to share a pattern?

OR, what if more that the files you want to change show the same pattern?This is where a directory utility comes in. It lets you click like a

Workbench, and it lets you ACT (often times) like a shell/CLI. Often I

find myself trying to move around files by "concept" not by name or

extension and a directory utility does that well. In fact, the "directory

utility" may be the next GUI user interface. A well written directory

utility synthesizes the CLI and Workbench environment. (MegaD allows more

than just two windows, for those about to argue that point)You can be old and stuck in your ways, nobody will stop you. (I happen to

enjoy being stuck in my ways. I have my shell and on occasion my

workbench, that's all I need right now) but DON'T act like a clonehead

and hate it just because it's change. The same reason most of you hate

dirutils is the same reason cloneheads hate your Amigas! It's different

and you'll have to learn "a new way of things" Well, don't have a fit! mda...@rainbow.sosi.com--

---

mda...@rainbow.sosi.com

I must not be understanding. I don't spend LOTS and LOTS of time doing

anything of the kind... I find it convenient enough to work in multiple

directories just by having two [or more] CLIs open. Generous [and obvious]

use of ASSIGNs makes most of the usual moving around simple, and in

any event I spend just about NO time doing any of that stuff, so even

if the utility were psychic and guessed what I wanted to do and did

it before I knew I wanted it done [so it took zero time]

moving/copying/protecting just ain't gonna save me even a single LOTS of

time. About the only thing I occasionally wish I had was something like

the Unix "find" utility [but that was near-psychic, since a brute

force search of my disk looking for a file name match is pretty much

uselessly slow... I can usually remember where the damn file was before

the search blunders across it].So I have to echo the original question: what is it that you folks

are doing so much and how do these utilities fit into the cycle, such

that the utilities prove to be so valuable, since it would seem that

our Amiga-use reflects VERY different patterns. /Bernie\

--

Bernie Cosell ber...@fantasyfarm.com

Fantasy Farm Fibers, Pearisburg, VA (703) 921-2358

Oops... that sounded wrong on my part. No actually I guess that is what

I was thinking. I always use the shell and that is all I was thinking

about. But You can open many drives/folder/etc. Workbench doesn't

do it for me....I execute programs from it but that is about it. I guess

I am to use to all those Unix boxes at school that they don't let us put

any type of gui.

Steve

Now, suppose the files whose protection you want to change are those

with the 'a' flag, may be in subdirectories, end with '.info' but do

not start with 'StayHere'. How would you do that ?I never stated that everything that can be done with BrowserII can't be

done without it. My opinion is that it is really easier, faster and

doen't imply to dive in the doc : just try the menus. I think it is one

of the most important concepts of GUIs : the first times you use menus

and icons, and when you get accustomed to the thing you use keyboard

shortcuts...

>> >For instance how would you do if you had to change the flags of every file of

>> >a directory (assuming some of the files are in subdirectories) ?

>>

>> I would definitely use the Find shell command from my own ExtraCmds21p

>> collection :), to select and act upon the files.

>>

>> In the simple case, I would just use protect with a pattern and the

>> all switch.

>the Unix "find" utility [but that was near-psychic, since a brute

>force search of my disk looking for a file name match is pretty much

>uselessly slow... I can usually remember where the damn file was before

>the search blunders across it].

>

What you need is a freely distributable suite of small programs called

Quick Tools. One of the programs, "QFind", will find files on your disk via

a wildcard search. However, instead of searching the disk each time you need

to find something, this program looks in a database of your disk contents

and so returns the result quickly (in less than a second on my system).The database is built up by running one of the other programs in the suite

and takes no longer than a search by the normal type of "find" utility (I do

this just before I do a backup of my harddrive).Other tools are provided to make moving around a disk faster. The archive name

I got it from is QuickTools.lha, but this was off of a cover disk, so I do not

know if it is somewhere on the network.Adam Calow

ee9...@brunel.ac.uk

Bless you ! :-)

You can see my point now when I say "[BrowserII] doesn't imply to dive in the

doc".Something I haven't mentionned yet is that a double-click on a filename in

a BrowserII window will launch it as workbench would have done, if the

file is an icon or has an icon associated to it in the directory (i.e the

window), and as shell would have done if not (in this case you get a requester

for last minute arguments). That means that a double click on the filename of

an icon project will launch the corresponding application with this project

as argument...BrowserII also enables you to copy or move files in the 'drag and release'

Workbench manner. Copy or move depends on context like Workbench (move if

in same device, copy either) but can be forced by option ('Always Copy', etc).Last, BrowserII lets you add menus to its menu bar for tools and commands

you would like to launch from it (sorta ToolManager...). Again, your commands

can be launched in workbench or shell mode and can take as arguments the

files you selected in any of its windows...Maybe you can see now that I like this program because it is so dicrete...Yann

--

"No sig today baby"

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