Short: The ULTIMATE Amiga Address Book (Update) Author: fosters@dvalley.demon.co.uk (Tom Bampton) Uploader: fosters@dvalley.demon.co.uk (Tom Bampton) Version: 4.2 Service Release 1 Type: biz/dbase Requires: biz/dbase/AAA_MegaBook.lha ============================= MegaBook 4.2 SR-1 Information ============================= Welcome to MegaBook 4.2 SR-1. This is a service release of MegaBook to fix a couple of bugs and introduce a few changes. All the stable code from 4.3 has been merged with the 4.2 code to create this release. Not enough has been done to warrant a complete release, but I have decided to release this version mainly as a bug fix. To install this version of MegaBook, you must have the original MegaBook 4.2 archive. If you dont, obtain AAA_MegaBook.lha from biz/dbase on Aminet. Check before you download that the version number in the readme is 4.2Release if it is not, then you do not need to install this version. Once you have MegaBook 4.2 installed, you can simply extract this archive directly into the MegaBook directory. Alternatively, you can copy the files over after extracting somewhere else. Whichever way you use, you must make sure the directory structure remains intact. The main changes in this version are as follows: MegaBook is now accesses the end of the database in a different way, giving a 100% speed increase on this part of the database. The first half is still accessed in the same way so there is no speed increase. For those that are interested, this is how it works. From day 1 MegaBook has used an exec list to store its database. This has the advantage of being easy on small databases and is easily attached to a ListView, but has the disadvantage of being slow on the end part of large databases. This would be better done as a hash table, but that would mean a major rewrite of large parts of code and therefore hasnt been done yet. MegaBook now stores a pointer to the middle of the database, and does all searches above this point from that pointer instead of from the beginning of the list. On large databases the difference is phenomanl. We created a 32768 record database for testing. On the old MegaBook it was noticeably slow to click on any middle to end record of the database, also goto was slow. This showed its ugly head in the form of MegaBook hanging for long periods. The new version saw this cleared up totally. It is still a little slow on the second to middle record, but this is barely noticeable. There are ways I can speed it up even more but on less then 1000 records it isnt worth doing. If anyone uses MegaBook for huge databases over 1000 records in size, please let me know. There was a major problem with the font code. If the font you selected didnt exist or was corrupted, MegaBook would get stuck in an infinite loop. I fixed this and added large informational messages to tell you exactly what is happening with regards to font problems. Also, I added an intelligent recovery to font problems. If the font you have specified does not open, MegaBook tries to use your system default font. If that doesnt open, it tries to use topaz 8, if that doesnt open (unlikely!) MegaBook fails to run. In low memory situations this can cause a wealth of requesters, as MegaBook tells you everything that is going on as it does it. This i feel is the lesser of two evils. If you use MegaBook in a low memory situation frequently, please let me know and Ill disable those requesters for you. An MBIO for OnyxBase 1.0 is also now included. Thanks must go to Stefan Blixth for the information on the file format. A number of smaller bug fixes and improvements have also been made. Please see the release notes for more information. ============================= Archive contents ============================= Original Packed Ratio Date Time Name -------- ------- ----- --------- -------- ------------- 9290 4081 56.0% 25-Feb-99 01:26:34 +ReleaseNotes 1899 1375 27.5% 09-Aug-98 00:59:32 +ReleaseNotes.doc.info 3548 1618 54.3% 21-Mar-99 20:51:54 +ServiceRelease.doc 1899 1375 27.5% 09-Aug-98 00:59:32 +ServiceRelease.doc.info 4996 3161 36.7% 04-Jan-99 06:37:26 +amterm.mbio 13128 6831 47.9% 04-Jan-99 06:23:44 +ascii.mbio 4048 2378 41.2% 04-Jan-99 06:43:42 +dynamic.mbio 4728 3024 36.0% 04-Jan-99 06:40:18 +maxsbbs.mbio 2568 1546 39.7% 04-Jan-99 06:41:42 +megabook2.mbio 2764 1688 38.9% 04-Jan-99 06:42:50 +megabook3.mbio 3852 2197 42.9% 04-Jan-99 06:45:20 +megabook4.mbio 2268 1413 37.6% 04-Jan-99 06:46:18 +ncomm305.mbio 6076 3668 39.6% 04-Jan-99 06:47:28 +onyxbase.mbio 2512 1513 39.7% 04-Jan-99 06:48:38 +phonebook1.mbio 5344 3270 38.8% 04-Jan-99 06:49:36 +phoneit13.mbio 5724 3589 37.2% 04-Jan-99 06:50:34 +yam13.mbio 6060 3716 38.6% 04-Jan-99 06:52:08 +yam2.mbio 120732 49757 58.7% 21-Mar-99 21:04:32 MegaBook 120344 49601 58.7% 21-Mar-99 21:03:20 MegaBook-020 2076 653 68.5% 13-Jul-98 20:17:42 MegaBook-020.info 2103 652 68.9% 13-Dec-98 02:03:24 MegaBook.info -------- ------- ----- --------- -------- 325959 147106 54.8% 23-Mar-99 17:09:22 21 files