-*- TRFish v0.65 beta -*- The DLG solution for Fred Fish disk processing By Jose Delgado FidoNet 2:341/23 34-1-7751318 HST Dual v32bis/v42bis FidoNet 2:341/31 34-1-7752411 HST Dual v32bis/v42bis Postal address Apartado de correos 49155 Madrid - Spain ABOUT THIS PROGRAM ------------------ This program is in PUBLIC DOMAIN. Use, redistribute and do with it that you want. I am tired of find that I have to pay or register all DLG utilities, including door games! You can send any comment, suggestion or bug report via FidoNet, or by post. If you find it useful, you can send also anything you want: money, latest Fred Fish disks, gifts, DLG utilities... I am specially interested to receive all DLG utilities, if you have writen one (if it's shareware or commercial, please send me a registered copy). INTRODUCTION ------------ Long time ago, while installing my Paragon system, before I had it as public, I thought a lot about the best way to put the famous Fred Fish collection in file librarys. As sysop, sure you think also about this, and have the same problems... * Full Fish disks? You must have a lot of disk space, the files are BIG, and usually users don't download it, because they are interested only in one of the programs in disk. * Separate files? Impossible because the hard work involved in this. In both cases: * You lost a lot of disk space, because there is a lot of programs updated, and also you compress in each disk programs like lharc, muchmore, distribution docs... * With new disks, the library became very quickly out-of-date. But I have a CD-ROM!! Yeah! I have one as well... * CD-ROM is not always a example of organization. If it come as full disks compressed, the users have the same problem. * Impossible to have a CD-ROM with the latest disk, as soon as you buy it, there is newer Fish disk released (Murphy's law :-)). What's the solution: have automatically processed all the Fish disks you have, split on individual programs the disk, and only have the latest version of program. Easy? Well, I wrote an ARexx script (I just got my all-new A3000 with 2.0 and ARexx, sorry), that using lharc, hatch, and tick, do this work and I have my BBS Fish library became very popular with the users. About 90% of programs pass without problems, but the script was slow, a example of bad-programming (;-)) and had some bugs. After this, I began to write the C-program, but ... my hard disk crash, and I lost all the sources, all the BBS, all the programs (no backup, sure!). After reinstalling all the soft, open the BBS to public ... I have notice of the problem with Paragon project, and I forgot all projects for Paragon utility I have, of course. Now, with my DLG installed, I had some days full of problems, with utilitys that don't work, buggy or that never arrived... I decided to have a DLG holiday, and write TRFish, with no bugs, more options and extremely useful for anybody running DLG. HOW IT WORKS? ------------- With TRFish you can have one or more DLG libraries automatically updated with latest Fish disk. TRFish scans the disk and DLG file libraries, updating old programs, adding new ones, and having a nice file description from the one on the Fish disk, and a new one informing about the complete name of program (useful, because most file listers cut after 12 chars), and Fish disks where the program has been processed by TRFish. TRFish v0.65 beta - by José Delgado (2:341/23) Usage: TRFish [|] Please read TRFish.DOC for details Path where TRFish can find the disk (i.e. RAM: DF0: WK:FISH...) Is the file to use for 'batch' Fred fish processing, allowing you to process hundreds of disks in one pass. <> TRFish will search in DF0: In any case, you will probably need a config file, that -must- be located in 'DLGCONFIG:Misc/' and named 'TRFish.cfg'. If the program can't find this file, it will use the defaults, that are: - Cache & search in ALL DLG libraries you have. - Manually input of library where add new files. - Log output to screen. - Use lha extension for crunched files, and call the cruncher using "lz -2 -Z -N -r -x -P-1 a". CONFIG FILE ----------- The config file is a standard ASCII file containing comments, blank lines, or keywords, and TRFish look for "DLGCONFIG:Misc/TRFish.CFG". Blank lines, lines beginning with ';' and lines not beginning with a keyword are ignored; you can mix upper/lower case. Keywords can be repeated along the file, they are: INAREA Marks -one- file area for caching and search TRFish files. INSIG Include in the list of areas to search all the areas currently in the SIG number. INALL Include ALL areas to be searched by TRFish. EXAREA Exclude from the current list this area number. EXSIG Exclude from the current list all the areas currently in the SIG number. LOG Detailed information of process will be saved to this file name you specify. ARC You can set a different call to cruncher (or a different cruncher) with this keyword. EXT Allow you to specify the extension used by the current cruncher (remenber, default is 'lha') DAREA If you use this, when TRFish found a new file to include, it will add it automatically to this library number, without ask you to select one from the list using the Intuition requester. Extremely useful for batch and automated processing. Example config file using all the keywords (only a example, not for use): ; Start of file ; This is a comment ; ^^^^^^^^^^ Blank line INALL INSIG 3 INSIG 5 INAREA 25 This line will be ignored EXAREA 3 EXSIG 6 LOG LOGS:TRFish.LOG ARC lharc a EXT lzh DAREA 2 ARC lz -Z -N -r -x -P-1 a EXT lzh ;End of file BATCH FILES ----------- TRFish 'batch' files are in fact 'some type' of scripts files that allows the process of multiple disks in one pass, automating and making very fast the work. Batch files can contain these type of lines: - Lines beginning with ';', they are comment lines ignored. - Blank lines, also ignored. - Lines beginning with '#', they instruct to TRFish to pass without any change to system the command after the character, using the standard C call 'system'. - 'Normal lines', containing a Fred Fish path. Look at this example generated by TRFCDTV: #assign ffdisk: CD0:FF_DISKS/481-510/FF_500 ffdisk: #assign ffdisk: CD0:FF_DISKS/481-510/FF_501 ffdisk: #assign ffdisk: CD0:FF_DISKS/481-510/FF_502 ffdisk: #assign ffdisk: remove Clear? Will process disk 500, 501 and 502 from CDTV in one pass. You can do this (as I did for test) to process the 530 (in version 1.3) disks in one pass! COMMON PROBLEMS --------------- - Guru after hours of processing? Don't worry! Simply run TRFish again with the same config and data, and enjoy it! - Your file.dat get corrupted? I've worked a lot to avoid this, and this should not happen. But if you find this, probably you can recover 100% of your data simply by running the DLG command Freshen. Please, report this and all data you cant get about the problem to me. SUGGESTIONS ------------ - If you use the CD-TV "Fred Fish Collection", any version, use the supplied TRFCDTV program. - If you have a CD-ROM, or a lot of full Fish disk already in your system, write a litte script to find these files, decompress it to RAM:, and call TRFish. This is a fast and automatically way to have an all-new Fish library as soon as possible. - If you want the files in various file libraries, at beginning use this method, and after processing all disk you can have, move it manually with DLG Transfer command to others libraries. After this, you can use TRFish to update all libraries automatically. Is a lot time-consuming be asked to enter manually the library number. - Always begin the process of a set of Fish disk from the latest you have, in this way you don't have to support continuous updates of crunched & DLG data files. KNOW PROBLEMS ------------- They derive from specials Fish disk configurations: - Programs with name that does not match the directory. - Programs that need something in C: LIBS: or DEVS: directories. - Programs with identical name, on consecutive disks, that usually area the same, but in two or more parts. Only the last is stored. THANKS GOES TO -------------- Paragon team .............. The first serious BBS soft compatible FidoNet. Paragon/StarNet support ... Never obtained any support or information, thanks to you I found DLG!. TelePro Technologies ...... Dialog Professional, a open soft and open support and information. Tony Miller ............... English doc revision. Luca Spada ................ Beta testing & forget SkyFish ;-) -*- Madrid, 23 November 1991 -*-