Path: news.uh.edu!barrett From: luiten@trantor.nmsd.oz.au (Robin Luiten) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: DirWork 2.0 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications Date: 17 Apr 1994 01:28:27 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 489 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <2oq3br$rk6@masala.cc.uh.edu> Reply-To: luiten@trantor.nmsd.oz.au (Robin Luiten) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: directory utility, disk, commercial Originator: barrett@karazm.math.uh.edu PRODUCT NAME DirWork 2.0 BRIEF DESCRIPTION DirWork 2.0 is a configurable directory utility. This is version 1.0 of this review (15 April 1994). Since I have played with the product for only 10 hours, I plan to update this review in a few weeks. But I've had the manual all day while writing this. :-) I nearly skipped work to stay at home and play. :-) AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Quasar Distribution Address: PO Box 188 Southland, Victoria 3192 Australia Telephone: 61-3-583 8806 FAX: 61-3-585 1074 Support BBS: 61-3-584 8590 (The Galaxy BBS 1200-14.4k) Internet: dirwork@brimston.apana.org.au dirwork@quasar.com.au ADSP: dirwork@alchemy.adsp.sub.org Amiganet: Either by using the DirWork EchoMail area or: netmail to Justin Deeley at 41:300/548.0 LIST PRICE $85 (Australian) Suggested Retail Price. I paid $80. (Hot off the presses, and I still got a discount. :-)) SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Runs with 512K RAM. (I have not tested this, but the executable is 100K, and DirWork does not take up much memory on my Amiga 3000.) Runs fine on my Amiga 3000/68030, my friend's 68000, and another friend's A4000/030. I expect it will run just fine on 68040 systems but have not tried yet. SOFTWARE Runs on AmigaDOS versions 1.2, 1.3, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0. Having said this I should also point out that it supports most of the new features added into AmigaDOS 2.0 and 3.0 releases as well. COPY PROTECTION None. Installs on a hard drive just fine. Only requires the addition of the supplied "asl.library" if you are running an old version of AmigaDOS namely 1.2 or 1.3. [The install program does this automatically I think.] Configuration data can be saved and loaded from anywhere but the default is the "S:" directory with the name "DW.cfg". MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000/25, 8 MB Fast RAM, 2 MB Chip RAM. 1 internal 880K floppies. Quantum 240 MB internal hard drive. Quantum 50 MB internal hard drive. Hydra Ethernet Card. WangDAT 2 Gigabyte tape drive (external). Seagate 400 MB external hard drive. Digital VRC-16 Multisynch Monitor. AmigaDOS 2.1. INSTALLATION Just click on the "Install" icon and follow the instructions. The installation is very simple for anyone who's used the Commodore Installer before. It looks like it would work fine on a floppy as well. INTRODUCTION DirWork 2.0 is billed as a very configurable directory utility, but actually it should have been billed as a "Directory Utility Construction Kit" or "DUCK". :-) The program seems very confusing at first, but a bit of perseverance and searching through the manual quickly builds a view of an extremely powerful directory utility with an awesome configuration system. Considering my 5 hours experience, I now have a great deal of respect for the configuration system. Initially I thought it a bit of kludge and hard to follow. Actually I have spent longer writing this review than I have spent playing with the actual program at this point in time [i.e., the day after purchase]. However the review has helped me to clarify a lot of the features and options available -- time well spent. For existing DirWork users: anything you can do in DirWork 1.62 and older is still available in DirWork 2.0 and generally there are a lot more options. For the users of other directory utilities, if you can get a look do so. I have just converted one friend from Rush, another from Directory Opus and another from DiskMaster. You'll find that you should be able to build a look-alike, work-alike facility relatively quickly, and once you have something familiar you can start extending it. However, DirWork 2.0 does not support more that two filelists visible nor multiple independent Intuition windows for filelists and command buttons. Initially, it looked like it would take me a week to get a config that I really felt comfortable with. After 5 hours though, I think I could get one going in a day or two. However, I'll be tweaking for weeks. [And loving it.... :-)] Also looks like I am going to make a couple of configurations: one for Workbench, one for custom screens, and a few variations which depend on the job I am doing. By the way, I have not had this program do something unexpected yet. Usually, I can make new software do something unexpected or crash within my first 2 hours of use. DirWork 2.0 has not caused me any large problems: just a few minor things that annoy me while I thrashed DirWork 2.0 last night. [I use the word "thrashed" deliberately because I tend to work software hard, and am not very forgiving....] OPERATION Here are some of the built in features of DirWork 2.0. . Both the Text and Picture viewer support automatic decrunching of PowerPacked files if the powerpacker.library is available. [NOTE: Manual says only that it unpacks PowerPacked pictures.] . Built in text viewer which supports Ansi, Hex, Text modes. Supports searching and printing of page or document. . Built in picture viewer. Supports Icons and IFF pictures. Screen auto-scrolls (AmigaDOS 2.0 and above). Display screen mode Requester (AmigaDOS 2.1 and above). Full Datatype support (AmigaDOS 3.0 and above). Colour Palette control (AmigaDOS 3.0 and above). . There is also a sound sample player and module player but I have not yet tried them out. . Built in Disk Operations. Supports disk copying, formatting, testing and installing. The format supports Quick , FFS, Cache, International modes, verifying and naming the disk. Supports both Normal and High density disks. Supports multiple destination disk copies. Supports hard drives [in manual; I have not checked this] . Built in General System Monitor. The following things may be monitored. . General configuration . Cards installed . Resident libraries/resource/devices . Tasks . Screens/Windows . DOS Devices . Memory . Resources . Devices . Interrupts . Libraries . Ports . Fonts currently resident . Video modes available [may be restricted for OS v2.0 and less] . Printing of any selected monitor information My Favourite System Monitor feature. [This will probably replace SnoopDOS and ToolTypeWatch for me] . Watch System Allows viewing of accessed ToolTypes and files opened by any running program. . All "standard" directory utility functions are present. . Seems to have full ARexx support. [just scratched so far] It seems a bit cryptic as it requires the raw configuration strings and they can get quite complex . Looks to have some good printing support. [untried] . Very complete support for all possible key combinations and qualifiers. . It has automatic file type detection. The file types recognised can easily be extended but is not necessarily a thing a novice would do. The built in types cover most everything. . Any button, menu, workbench application icon and key can have just about any of the possible operations attached to it. CONFIGURATION POSSIBILITIES Yoiks! you name it, it can do it. :-) The configuration possibilities are limitless. It is almost scary. Here is a list of some of the display config stuff: . Every displayable item in the DirWork 2.0 screen or window can be moved, sized, coloured. This includes buttons, filelists, prop gadgets, menus etc. etc. etc. :-) . Fully configurable menus, colours, functions, fonts, etc. . Can be opened as a window on any public screen . Can be opened on its own screen which can be either custom or a clone of the workbench screen. . Can run as borderless backdrop window or as a normal window on its own screen. . Each individual display element can have an independently defined font. . Any function in DirWork 2.0 can have an application icon on the workbench to allow stuff to be dropped on it for actions. This applies to those AmigaDOS version's that support this. . Can define additional items for the workbench tools menu. This applies to those AmigaDOS version's that support this. Crumbs, you could even use DirWork 2.0 as a replacement for your favourite dock program. The command configuration possibilities are limitless in an independent way to the display configurations. Listing the possibilities doesn't seem like a good idea as the list would get too long. Here are some of the highlights of the command config stuff that attracted my attention. . Just about any operation can be attached to any key or mouse action. . Just about any action can be have qualifiers associated with it; e.g., it is possible to have one button that does 10 different things, depending on the mouse button and key qualifier combination. . From the cursory look through options, most options can have a flag set that indicates that they are abortable. . A very general requester scheme can be used to get extra information for commands. . One very nice feature is the automatic switchover of accessing df0: to pc0: if an MS-DOS disk is inserted in that drive. This applies to those AmigaDOS versions that support this. . A feature I really love is that if you load a config file from anywhere, it remembers where the config came from. Now when you select Save Config, it saves to the file you loaded earlier, not to the default setup config. This is one feature I would like to see in a lot of other software out there. DOCUMENTATION A printed manual is supplied, with a nice spiral binding that lies flat, which also allows the book to fold back on itself. This is my favourite sort of manual binding. :-) Overall I say the documentation is good, and generally better than most other documentation I have used. I develop software for a living so have a fair bit of experience with software documentation. However, the manual has no tutorial on configuration. A few simple tutorials for changing specific things might help a novice get started. The manual does give good little examples when discussing each of the options, but the novice may give up before finding the example. For those novices out there: "Don't give up." Ask for help and persevere. It'll be worth it. The overall style of the documentation is that of a reference manual. The first few chapters cover basics of using DirWork and some of its features. Once the documentation gets to configuration, though, it is very logical about the order of presentation and can be read linearly quite well. LIKES The configurability is great. The configurations directory contains some good examples. The interface for configuration seems a little kludgey at first; but once familiar, it is quite efficient, and I have learned to really like it. My all time favourite DirWork 2.0 feature is that I can configure it so that the left mouse button treats the left filelist as the source directory and the right mouse button treats the right filelist as the source directory. This sort feature has been in several of the earlier shareware releases of DirWork as well. The configuration file is ASCII text, so for large scale changes it is easy just to load it into an editor and hack away as long as you follow the format rules for the configuration. I like the manual. It is well organised and logically presented. I like the full support of configurable application icons. It is a great idea and I look forward to being able to use it. [This is only under AmigaDOS 3.0 I think.] This list here is only the immediate highlights I can think of. There is so much more. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS Gee, what isn't there to like. :-) But seriously folks. I wish there were not so many items in some of the cycle gadgets in the configuration interface. I wish it was quicker and easier to position the GUI interface stuff when modifying its interface. The control is sufficient, but I find myself getting impatient waiting for a button to be scrolled to the position where I want it. I wish the palette setting tool had a numerical display associated with it so I can see the values as I set the colour. [NOTE: It is possible to see the values in another screen however.] I'd like the scrolling of the filelists to be a bit smoother. Some of the other directory utilities I have used have better filelist scrolling. I'd like the Watch System tool to display the name of processes which open and close files, etc. I'd a gadget that deletes other gadgets from the config. In concert with this, I'd like a way to load a partial configuration to redefine buttons in the area I have just deleted them from. This would be just the ultimate for having DirWork 2.0 modify itself in increments depending on what you are doing. I sincerely hope that there will be a DirWork 2.0 configuration directory on Aminet so that we can look at all the wild and wonderful configurations that people come up with. Doesn't seem to support the click-move-click operation which is supported in DiskMaster and Directory Opus. I have more ideas etc. and am in contact with the author about them already. So I am looking forward to some really great updates. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS DirWork 2.0 is a directory utility and so has a very long history in the amiga community going back to the early days of the old Amiga 1000. [ I still have my 1000 in A1 condition. :-)] DirWork 2.0 lives up to all its ancestors and paints a bright picture of what to expect from them in the future. For those "DW 1.62" fans, there is a classic config that feels just like home for people updating to DirWork 2.0. For others, there is a reasonable selection of different configs that should initially satisfy most people. I think that DirWork 2.0 is the next step in the evolution of directory utilities. I have played with just about every directory utility out there from the early "DU" 6 years ago to most of the current crop including "Rush", "MTool", "MegaD", "DirectoryOpus", "Disk Master" and lots more I have forgotten. I think that DirWork 2.0 provides an awful lot of power in a very small and configurable package. [NO, I don't have registered copies of all the directory utilities I have used. I just played with the demos or with friends' copies of Disk Master and Directory Opus on their machines to try 'em out.] As far as comparing goes, it is difficult at the moment with only about 10 hours accumulated play time. I will attempt to compare better in a future update to this review. Overall, DirWork 2.0 has been able to do just about anything I try to make it do, and I have tried a lot of stuff that I have seen in other directory utilities. BUGS Yup, I have found a few bugs but nothing really fatal yet. Overall, DirWork 2.0 seems very robust and stable. I have also been in contact with the author, and from his enthusiastic response, I have high hopes for excellent support. The bugs that might be of interest are: There are few very minor omissions and mistakes I have found in the manual. I won't even list them as they are so minor. Two of the example configurations have errors which might cause some people problems, these are: 1. The configuration "DWClassic.cfg" For some reason the filelist display leaves off the last digit of the filesize of each file. This must have crept in in the last minute before release. :-) 2. The configuration "Tall.cfg" The menu for sorting and resorting the filelists in different orders has the wrong functions attached to it so they do not seem to do anything. If you copy a directory into another directory, everything is fine. But if you copy the same directory with the same name to the same destination again, the destination directory will actually display two copies of your directory in the destination filelist. This is only a display problem, and if you re-read the directory everything is OK. This one is a bit annoying. If you try to copy a directory into itself, DirWork 2.0 will quite happily attempt to do it. It may crash your machine, but generally it just makes a very deep directory tree before it stops due to DOS errors related to maximum depth of directory tree. If a non-proportional font is used in the filelists, then it is possible when entering an empty directory that there will be some display stuff left over from the parent directory down the right hand side of the filelist display. These bugs are minor and easily avoided once known. VENDOR SUPPORT I have been in contact with Chris, and he seems really keen to get in and enhance/fix as reports come in. I assume as Chris is this way that Quasar, the distributor here, will be similarly keen. I am just a very happy customer and have no affiliation with the author or the distributor. WARRANTY There is a 30 day warranty on the disk. Other than that, there is no warranty. I don't know if the warranty only applies to the original purchaser. CONCLUSIONS It is really great: my impression is "WOW!!" I give it 4.5 stars out of 5. I took off half a point because it'll scare heck out of novices who are keen to configure without reading the manual properly. This program is worth every cent of the $80 Australian dollars I spent. Actually, considering the price, it is an absolute bargain. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1994 Robin Luiten. All rights reserved. _-_|\ r.luiten@nmsd.oz.au /Disclaimer: / * <-- Systems Development (AOTC), / \_.-._/ Telecom East Tower Roma St, / C references are NULL && void* v Brisbane, Australia. / --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews