Conference hydra::amiga_v1

1875.0. "Zippy Dir Utility" by LEDS::ACCIARDI (Insert witty anti-Dukakis slogan here - ) Mon Nov 14 1988 00:02

    
    I can never resist checking out the latest directory utility program.
    With me, it's like driving past a car wreck.  I have a fascination
    with these little buggers...
    
    Anyway, the latest offering is called Zippy.  Zippy is, in my opinion,
    a very creative and original utility.  Unlike DiskMan (now DiskMaster)
    which builds it's own memory hungry custom screen, Zippy opens a
    small window on your WorkBench screen.  The window has a multitude of
    gadgets, but doesn't seem cluttered at all.  There's the usual SOURCE
    and DESTINATION gadgets, and a dynamic scroll bar for listings. Zippy
    also reads your actual device list, rather than throwing up an array
    of buttons.
    
    What makes Zippy really slick is it's use of script menus.  You
    create a small file called 'MENU.ZIP' and keep it in your s directory.
    When Zippy is started, it reads in this file and offers, at your
    choice, any system command in the form of a drop down menu attached
    to the WorkBench drag bar.  Zippy will pass any highlighted file
    to the drop down menu.
    
    For example, I have a UTILITIES menu that has SHOW, SOUND, and NEWZAP
    as it's three submenus.  I can highlight any file from Zippy's window
    and then select the menu item.  The file will then be passed to
    the command.
    
    Zippy sometimes acts funny, so it may have a few bugs.  It prefers
    to be run from the CLI.  There is no icon included in the archive,
    but I made one and tried running it from WorkBench.  It loaded and
    appeared to run; it even opened a small output window on the WorkBench.
    However, many operations just didn't work right.
    
    Another important feature, which people ought to be paying attention
    to, is ability ot maintain the PURE, SCRIPT, and HIDDEN bits associated
    with AmigaDOS files.  If you plan to use the 1.3 RESIDENT command
    and SHELL to make things memory resident, you'd better preserve
    your PURE bit.  DiskMan seems to lose the PURE bit when copying
    or moving files.  Zippy honors all 8 AmigaDOS file attributes.
    
    As a bonus, the author includes his FILEINFO program, which is an
    Intuition-ized requestor that allows you to quickly toggle any file
    attributes on or off.  In fact, the example 'menu.zip' file has
    'FileInfo' as one of it's predefined options.
                                                
    ZIPPY.ARC is currently in LEDS3::USER6:[ACCIARDI.AMIGA], but I'll
    be moving it to NORSE""::AMIGA:[UTILITIES] in a few days.
    
    I suspect people will be modifying and improving on Zippy in the
    near future.  Hopefully, Commodore will catch on and address the
    deficiencies in WorkBench.
    
    Ed.