FFE USER COMMANDS FFE(1) NAME ffe - file front end SYNOPSIS FFE [-r] -r Do not hide *.readme files DESCRIPTION FFE is an easy-to-use program for file handling and downloading. FFE needs vt100-emulation. The screen is splitted into two parts where on the top is list of files and on the bottom is a description of the file. If ffe can't find a description for a file, it tries to read the file's filenote and shows it. FFE needs xpr for file transfers. New files are displayed BOLD. All the directories which contain new files are also showed BOLD. FFE uses user's local variable $lastlogin to detect whenever a file is new to user. The following commands are implemented: ? gives a short internal manual page. n, ^n, goto the next entry in the list p, ^p, goto the previous entry in the list ., back up to the parent directory d download files using XPR. The user may choose any xpr protocol from AXsh:etc/xprotos.tab or just copy the selected (using TAB) files to his home directory. s, show the description file. Description path must be defined in AXsh:etc/rc.ffe. If the file has an associated .readme file (file. :: file.readme), that file is displayed. If there is no description file, the filenote is displayed instead, if any. c, e, enter a directory or start the defined command on the file. Can be used to show contents of .lha, .lzh or .zoo file. Commands must be defined in AXsh:etc/rc.ffe. If the selected file is a text file it will be displayed. o toggle show all/new. Selects between showing all files or just the new files. Directories are displayed always because the modification date is only changed on the parent directory, not the all way up to the root. w write description. This option is available ONLY for users who have accesslevel privileged or superuser. k delete the file and the associated readme file. Only available for superusers. q, x quit ffe RC.FFE AXsh:etc/rc.ffe controls the behavior of FFE. %filepath: in the first line defines where your public files are stored on the disk. It may also be a complete path name as well as an assign. If it is a path, it must end with a /. Now you can also define several %filepath: entries. If a specific filepath is not available when ffe is started, it is not shown. This suits well for files in removable media, volumenames can be used as filepath entries. If more than one filepath exists, FFE will show 'links' to all of them in the top level directory and you can change between them. FFE will give access to all subdirectories that are under the defined filepath directory. This is not always wanted, for example if you have some directories that you want to be private. FFE won't show a directory (and you can't enter it when in FFE) if its hidden-flag is set or the execute-flag is unset. So, you can hide whole branches of the directory tree from the normal users. Superusers still have access to all file directories. %descpath: defines where the file description texts are stored. This directory should exist to make the descriptions work. Each file may have a short description file. Also, Aminet-style readme-files are supported and preferred instead of a global description directory. (each "file.suffix" has an associated "file.readme") If there is no description file, FFE will show the filenote, if that exists. Filenotes are generally easier to use and consume NO disk space. %xprpath: defines where the xpr program is stored. Usually it's with AXsh and is stored in AXsh:bin/. With %suffix: entries you can define different commands for different types of files. This can be used to allow a user to take a look into the contents of a file packet. Just define a command and an appropriate option for a suffix. The command is started with 'c' and if no suffix match and the file is not binary, it is displayed with a pager. The default rc.ffe will have suffixes defined for zoo, lha, lzh and dms packets, but you may have to change the command paths. Suffixes are handled dynamically - no limit on the number of suffixes you can have. Also, you can use %f for the filename in the suffix command (if there is no %f, the filename is appended to the end). If the suffix starts with an '!', the output of the command is not displayed. This can be used to launch background commands, like sample players or picture viewers with the ability to have multiple setting files. It is also possible to change the size of the status window with the setting %statuswindowrows:. The value in this setting includes the two status bars. The smallest accepted value is 7, the largest you can get is the height of the window minus five. You can also select a different pager command with the %morecmd: setting. The default value is AXsh:bin/more. You can have separate configuration for each user level. First the file AXsh:etc/rc.ffe. is checked. If that file does not exist, then each accesslevel below the user's level is tried and finally plain rc.ffe if none of the specific configuration files can be opened. This feature can be used to give newly-registered users only a restricted access to files and that way encourage uploading, message writing and other activities. An example: User accesslevel: normal 1st try: AXsh:etc/rc.ffe.normal 2nd try: AXsh:etc/rc.ffe.guest 3rd try: AXsh:etc/rc.ffe.visitor Finally: AXsh:etc/rc.ffe An example /etc/rc.ffe : %filepath: Archive: %filepath: Fortunes: %descpath: AXsh:etc/ffe/ %xprpath: AXsh:bin/xpr %morecmd: AXsh:bin/more -s %suffix: .zoo utils:zoo l %suffix: .lha utils:lha p %f file_id.diz %suffix: .lzh utils:lha v %suffix: .dms utils:dms view %suffix: !.iff utils:m DB %suffix: !.8svx run utils:dsound >nil: -2 %statuswindowrows: 8 AUTHOR Juha 'Comm' Tuominen Pasi 'Albert' Ojala FILES AXsh:bin/ffe the program itself AXsh:bin/xpr program for transferring files AXsh:etc/rc.ffe configuration file(s) for ffe SEE ALSO ftp, xpr BUGS All files ending with ".readme" are hidden, not just those that have associated packets. Use "-r" option when starting FFE if this is a problem.