The AmigaDOS Replacement Project - a User's View. by Jason Pearse [Ed: Mike Simpson, who wrote the Spreadsheet on MD7, has put together a Theme disk for us which combines ARP1.1 set up with the Directory Utility JOBS, fully customised to access all your normal commands and utilities.] Many Amiga users will have heard of the AmigaDOS Replacement Project (ARP), a project proposed and lead by Charlie Heath of Microsmiths in the United States. The project is a serious attempt to replace the standard AmigaDOS commands, as supplied by Commodore, with a new set of DOS commands which are smaller, faster, and more useful. In a strong show of faith in the popularity of the Amiga, the ARP team have placed the entire ARP setup into the public domain. The comments in this article about ARP are based on the ARP set included with TxED PLUS (ie, version 1.1, as on our special ARP disk). Other versions may differ in the range of commands included. What is ARP, exactly? Basically, ARP consists of all the most-used DOS commands (RUN, LIST, DIR etc.) re-written in raw assembler. The original Commodore-supplied DOS commands are written in BCPL, which is now a largely out-of-date programming language, and not renowned for its speed or compactness. By writing the ARP commands in assembler, Charlie Heath and friends have almost halved the size of most of the BCPL commands, while making them more capable. For example, the original DIR command is 8128 bytes, and provides the following features:- - limited wildcard capability. - list directory by device name (e.g. DIR DF0:) - list directory by disk name (e.g. DIR AMIGALIBDISK74:) - options for interactive directory, hex display and display ALL files and directories. The ARP version of DIR is 4872 bytes, and provides these capabilities:- - improved use of wildcards (many ARP commands allow wildcards - more on this later). - find a file on disk (i.e. DIR "df1:My_prog" will display "My_prog" if the file exists on the disk in df1:) - allows highlighting of directory names, with file names left unhighlighted. - display size of all files listed (similar to LIST). - help for interactive mode. - display only files and not directories or vice versa. As you can see, ARP is powerful! Since DIR would be one of the most often-used commands, imagine what a C: directory full of similarly-powered commands can do for your computing time! Because smaller commands take less time to load, you save time, without even considering the time you save because the commands are more POWERFUL. Using ARP also reduces the time you have to wait while your machine grinds through its startup-sequence. Now a brief word on wildcards. Wildcards allow you to specify a group of files or directories with the same "file name", using one or more of several special characters. This is a powerful feature of other DOS's (some would say it is the ONLY powerful feature of MS-DOS, for instance). For example, the character "*" stands for any number of any character. In other words, the command "LIST DF1:*.doc" will list all the files in the root directory of DF1: which end in ".doc". Wildcards are allowed in commands like COPY, DIR, CD, RENAME, etc. The only exception to this rule is that commands like RUN will not allow wildcards (imagine typing RUN DF1:* by accident and watching helplessly as every program on DF1: starts and you will see why RUN doesn't allow wildcards!) One especially useful command that ARP provides is RESIDENT. Resident provides the ability to make specific commands memory-resident. This is best illustrated with an example. Say, for example, that you use DIR often. By typing RESIDENT DIR, the DIR command will be stored away in memory, and all subsequent uses of the DIR command will run immediately. The DIR command will NOT be loaded from disk. Instead, it will run from memory. And if you have two CLI's running, and use DIR simultaneously in both of them, both CLI's will use the same copy of the DIR code. This translates into lower memory usage and more efficient use of your time. Besides replacing the standard AmigaDOS, the full ARP set supplies other public domain or shareware utilities. The most useful of these is ConMan, by William Hawes. This small utility installs itself away from prying eyes, and provides a much more friendly CLI environment. All CLIs opened after ConMan is installed will have line editing. That's right, no more backspacing an entire line to change one mis-typed letter! Now, simply move the cursor back THROUGH the correct letters, press delete to remove the offending character, and retype it correctly. Press RETURN, and your command is executed. ConMan provides a command line history facility, which remembers the last 10 commands you've used, and will recall them instantly. Imagine you're copying files from one disk to another. Using a standard CLI, you'd have to re-type the COPY command once for every file. With a ConMan CLI, just type it once, recall it, and edit the filename, and run it again! A utility called LOADLIB is also included. Ever been using a stripped-back version of WorkBench that doesn't have a particular library on it? You run a program, and it comes back with the message (for example) "Couldn't open DiskFont Library". Great! The only option is to reboot with a disk that HAS the library on it, and start the program again. Using LOADLIB (yes, it runs from the WorkBench), all you would do is insert a disk that DOES contain the library and use LOADLIB to load the library into memory. Then your poor program can use the library even though it's not on your boot disk. Another bonus program included with some versions of ARP is PROFF, a professional text formatter. I haven't tried this one, myself, since my word processing needs are met by MicroEMACS, but I have heard it is quite powerful. Note that PROFF may not be included with some versions of ARP, though it is public domain, so you should be able to pick it up somewhere. All right then, what's the bottom line? I would recommend ARP unreservedly. The programs are smaller, faster and more efficient. I have found only 1 program that doesn't like working in conjunction with ARP, and I can't remember what it was (must have been something really significant, huh?!) ARP is free (for the price of a disk - is that free?) and it represents a considerable effort on the part of Heath and associates to really do something IMPORTANT for the Amiga. A machine cannot go incredibly far if its DOS is unwieldy and difficult to use - ARP puts the Amiga ahead of everything but UNIX in this regard. For anyone who uses the CLI at all, ARP is a must. ************************** END OF ABOUT_ARP *******************************