’’00’ ’00’01’03’01The Library SYS: Fragmenter’00 ’ ’ ’03’02PUH / AGONY ’01’01’00’’ I guess I am among the lucky ones, because my HD is able to swell no less than some 450 Mb. I have a few friends that whose HDs are only able to store 200, 125 or even 75 Mb, and I really feel sorry for them; in this age, a man has to have choices (I like Harrelson), and he has to be able to put up with a lot of free space in order to get the dices rolling. Sure, Amiga HDs tend to be hard to fill up (as opposed to PC and Mac drives), but 100 Mb is, I would say, the very least an honest man deserves. Me, I have removed everything that seemed useless (or less usable, at least), and some seventy (or was that sixty) percent remains unused. Then I had a look in my libs-drawer, and fuck me, 6.2 Mb! Two hundred and twelve, 2-1-2, libraries (the compressors-and-such-dirs NOT included) ate my valuable space. What on Earth should I do with 212 libs? Nothing, that was the very truth, so I started to remove them one by one. Well, that may sound easy, but it wasn't; anybody knows which programs that use RETRUCATE.LIBRARY and Y-SWITCH.LIBRARY? I was - of course - not interested in rendering my favourite programs unstartable, so I had to remove only the libraries that were useless to me. In other words, I did not know what to do. What (the fuck) drives a man into making an own library just because he has made a program of his own? Libraries should almost be forbidden, or there should be severe restrictions as for the making , registering, and distribution of new libraries. I am not interested in seeing my HD being eaten up by meaningless libraries; I am not keen on watching my valuable SCSI-II turning more and more fragmented by the day just because of the mega-lo-mania of program authors. Still, I have 430 Mb, so I'm cool. No, we all should pity Polyfemos / Agony, whose 75 Mb are too precious to be filled with Y-SWITCH.LIBRARY. Anyway, what I am here to find out is what all those damn libraries are doing on my HD. I bought my computer second hand, and the hard disk turned out to be ’02full’01 of libraries I had no intention whatsoever of keeping. I deleted most of them, and then I learned that half of the enclosed programs and games (shareware ;) refused to start. "Cannot find RETRUCATE.LIBRARY", "Unable to locate GAMEXXX.library", and "Please install the XXX library package before proceeding", I was told. (I'd say the line is crossed when games have libraries of their own, but you never know) At that point I formatted all partitions and installed everything from the beginning with focus on S.Duvan's setup. Still, today, I'm back where I started, with 20 Mb of libraries. Thus, what I want to know is ’02* ’01What am I doing wrong? ’02* ’01Why can't program authors go together in pairs or small groups and unite their separate libraries into one common? ’02* ’01Why is it allowed to release programs that require external (i.e., not enclosed in the package) super hero libraries that nobody seems to have? ’02* ’01Why is is that a single library can be developed by several persons at the same time, each claiming that their version is the correct one and that all other developers are fakers? ’02* ’01Why is it that the VERSION command does not work with all libraries? ’02* ’01Why hasn't anybody complied a "Complete Guide of Amiga Libraries" which specifically points out where the different libraries belong and what tools that require them? ’02* ’01Why do some programs require assigns whereas others don't? ’02* ’01Why does some programs need specific libraries whereas others don't? I guess that's about that. I am really looking forward to Amiga Technologies new, super tough library restrictions inspired by this article. Maybe I'll even get mentioned in the "Thanks to" section, who knows? ’’01