=============== ABOUT THIS DISK =============== - Essential Aminet vol.1 May '94 - Introduction ============ Most large files downloaded from the Aminet can be compiled onto it's own self-booting disk. Some libraries will even compile small utilities onto 720K disks, leaving more than 200/300K free on every disk. What a waste. The Essential Aminet series intend to bring about most of the latest software from the Aminet and to compile them on self-bootable disks. However, most of the files are under 300K and would not usually be large enough for their own disk. The Essential Aminet volumes bring together the best of Aminet for that particular month. It does NOT mean that all the utilities/programs are new, they are programs that have been UPLOADED to the Aminet in that particular month. Who Compiled Them? Essential Aminet is compiled monthly by Northern Amiga Users Group, in association with VARK. Who's Vark? Vark is well known for his excellent, LSD Legal Tools-type, CLI utility compilations. Now up to version five they have received a warm welcome with both the Amiga press and public. All his compilations contain many useful programs, jam packed onto one disk. When are they Available? Essential Aminet is available the first week in every month. Unlike the Amiga magazines who release a March magazine in February, we would release our March compilation in the first week in April. Why? Simply because we need to spend the month collecting the best bits and pieces from the Aminet then allowing us a week to compile them. Where are they Available From? Vark and Northern Amiga Users Group will be distributing the Essential Aminet each month and as they become more and more popular they will be available from a magnitude of PD libraries. Check out your favourite library. If you would like to order them directly then send the relevant amount to one of the addresses below. The main advantage of ordering direct is that you get the new volume before it is officially released. 2 Disks Essential Aminet = £1.99 Postage = 50p Yearly Subscription = £27.00 Northern Amiga Users Group VARK P.O. Box 151 45 Maplecroft Crescent Darlington Wincobank County Durham Sheffield DL3 8YT S9 1DN Tel. (0325) 352260 Make all cheques and postal orders payable to Northern Amiga Users Group. The VARK CLI tools are available from NAUG or VARK directly. What's on the Disks in General? You will see utilities, reports, guides, icons, updates, patches and various other bits and pieces throughout the volumes. You may not see demos or games as they are generally self-bootable programs of their own right. May's Essential Aminet is a two disk compilation. It comprises of, Disk A ABackup v4.06 ABackup is a backup program written for the Amiga. It may be used both to make a backup of your hard disk or to archive files, handles non-AmigaDOS partitions, has a full Intuition interface, and can use XPK library. Under 2.0 system release, ABackup is able to recognize links and to manage high density disks. AmigaGuide Writer v1.01 AGW is a prgram that allows you to create quickly and easily AmigaGuide format files from a text file. AGW does not allow you to edit the text rather you create the text in any text editor. Bootscreen v2.2 Some time ago, I downloaded a cute little utility called "BootPic" (no 'K' at the end). This addessed the fact that under OS 2.0 and greater, you are treated to a blank screen until the Workbench comes up -- very boring and annoying in that you can't confirm whether or not you're going through a normal boot sequence. Correcting the problem, "BootPic" displayed a mock "Windows" startup screen until the Workbench came up. The only problem was that this screen was hard-coded in the program, and the extra-tall PAL screen and incorrect version number couldn't be corrected. The author said that he would probably not add IFF support in the future. Enter BootScreen. My program is smaller, loads an IFF picture, and also supports AGA 24-bit palettes. Clipboard Project v2.3 ClipBoard Enhancer (a.k.a. CBE) is a commodity that enhances the way that the Amiga clipboard works. The clipboard (as I am sure most of you already know) is a device that allows programs to copy data from one application, and allow the user to paste that data back either to the same application or even to other applications that are capable of using the clipboard. Combine Anim v1.0 CombineANIM is used to join two animations into one larger one. This is usually used in conjunction with the SplitANIM utility to combine animations that were split up due to lack of system memory. DOSTrace v2.20 DOSTrace is a program that allows you to monitor what AmigaDOS is doing while you are working with your Amiga. You can watch which files your programs use, if they find all the files they require, where they are looking for them and much other activity of that kind. EditKeys v1.5 Around late 1990, I was trying to find a program to allow me to edit the system keymap files. There were a few that let you put strings on keys, but none gave total control over all the features of keymaps. So I decided to write my own editor. I mean, how hard could it be..? The result is EditKeys. Disk B MultiFileSystem Thanks to the versatility of AmigaDOS, we are able to use many different file systems on our disks. The most popular is of course CrossDOS (tm), but many other file systems can be found in the PD. Adding a new file system to the Amiga is simplicity itself: just copy a file in L:, provide a suitable mountlist, and there you go. This works flawlessy if every physical unit is accessed by a single file system, but if multiple file systems share the same device, some problems arise: - You have to call the same unit with different names (e.g. DF0: and PC0:) depending of the kind of disk inserted. - When you insert a PC disk, the Workbench shows a DF0:???? icon, and vice versa; this can be very annoying especially for owners of more than one drive. - When a file system is busy (for example during a DiskCopy), the other file systems can still access the disk; this goes against the concept of "inhibiting" a device. MultiFileSystem solves all of these problems. It isn't a file system in the usual way: it is an interface to other file systems. When you mount it, you tell it which file systems it should use; afterwards, when a disk is inserted, MultiFileSystem will recognize it and pass the commands to the appropriate file system. This means that with a single device name, for example DF0:, you can access any conceivable file system! You are not limited to floppy drives, of course: I successfully installed MultiFileSystem over a 128Mb magnetooptical drive. Mostra v2.0 This file describes `Mostra' 2.0, a shareware IFF viewer featuring real-time unpacking scroll, dozens of options, localization, "smart" analysis of any IFF file (FORMs, LISTs,... also nested ILBM!), total control over display modes, simple slideshow processing, pattern matching, multipalette, double buffering, fast decompression, color cycling, Texinfo docs, startup files for easy custom configurations and complete WB support. PC Restore v2.50 PcRestore is a utility for transfering files between MSDOS to Amiga. For example, when you have downloaded a bunch of files on your PC (you have dl:ed at your job, it's cheaper that way:-) ) and want it transfered to your Amiga. Most files you have downloaded are .LHA and .DMS files and are rather big. You could copy every file to PC-disks and then copy them manually to your Amiga ,indeed possible but who wants to work unnecessarily? If you want to transfer a file that is larger than 729 K (which is the diskspace available on a PC without HDFloppy), you'll have to split it on the PC and join it on the Amiga, indeed possible but who wants to work unnecessarily? QDisk v2.11 QDisk provides you with the ability to monitor, from WorkBench, the space usage of all AMIGA DOS disk volumes that are currently mounted. QDisk can also send you a notification using a standard requester or a recoverable alert when usage exceeds a limit set by you. TBC v2.52 Earlier this year I downloaded (from Aminet) a program called HFK, written by Herbert West. HFK displays a simple clock in the left-hand end of the Workbench screen title-bar. Importantly, it uses the correct colour scheme (even on Kickstart 3.0), ie the same colours as the Workbench menus. I like HFK, because it is fully Kickstart 3.0 compatible, and simple. However, I had one tiny quibble with HFK. If I wanted to change the Workbench preferences, then I had to quit HFK, otherwise IPrefs displayed a requester saying "Please close all windows". This really annoyed me (because I often change screenmodes, and it was really tedious to quit & restart HFK each time). Then I hit upon the solution: I wrote a simple AmigaDOS script that would quit HFK and then re-start it after a short delay (to give IPrefs time to close & re-open the Workbench screen). I left the icon for this script on the Workbench, so all that I had to do was double-click the icon just before changing screenmode. An elegant solution. Or so I thought. WB Flash v1.12 WBflash is a small program to make nice flashes on active Workbench windows or the Workbench backdrop. It`s very easy to generate a flashstructure with intuition gadgets. You can of course save your flashes, they will be saved as a normal prefsfile. WBflash works without problems under OS2.0 or higher, thus it won`t run any good on 1.x machines. (Everbody should have OS2.0 or higher,anyway!) I wrote this program just because I thought it was a good idea for a program and I haven`t seen this kind of program before. WBLock v1.2 WB Lock is a little Workbench Locking program. Nothing special, and the funny thing is, is that it does not actually LOCK the workbench. No. It simply sets all the colour registers to zero, and waits for a password to be typed in. Heres the full instructions: Window Daemon v1.9 WindowDaemon gives you more control over intuition windows and screens. It allows you to switch between the various screens that are available, similar to the Amiga M switch, but with a graphical interface. Copyright ========= Althought the programs within this compilation are either Public Domain, Freeware or Shareware the compilation itself is copyright to Northern Amiga Users Group. None of the contents should be altered or changed in anyway. Support the Amiga. Distribute this compilation as you wish. All rights reserved. ================================ NORTHERN AMIGA USERS GROUP P.O. Box 151 Darlington County Durham DL3 8YT Tel: (0325) 352260 E-Mail: bux8@unn.ac.uk ================================