From: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Moderator Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Jason L. Tibbitts III Subject: REVIEW: AmigaUtil II Keywords: utility, disk, file manipulation, shareware Path: karazm.math.uh.edu!amiga-reviews Distribution: world Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications --text follows this line-- AmigaUtil II is another one of them disk utility programs that allow you to manipulate files and directories with a mouse. It is listed as shareware, but there was no documentation in the archive, so I haven't the faintest idea where to send shareware fees or even how much to send. [This was sent to me by Charles Hill of AMReport fame. The last working address I have for him is: Charles Hill/InfoTrak <76370.3045@compuserve.com>. -JLT3] The author is Marc Lafontaine and the ABOUT says support is by a Maurice Lapierre. The ABOUT lists the version number as 2.0 but the title bar says it is version 1.84. I think the former is correct. AmigaUtil was in an LZH archives with three files: AmigaUtil, the corresponding .info file and a .def configuration file. The archive is small so download time is quick. STATISTICS ~~~~~~~~~~ AmigaUtil II is only 83028 bytes long and is pure code, so there is no problem making it a resident process. The configuration file goes in the S: directory, but is not necessary unless you want some custom functions. There are six configurable device gadgets and 76 configurable custom gadgets. APPEARANCE ~~~~~~~~~~ The Workbench 2 look is in. AmigaUtil II (AU2) opens a four-color screen with default colors being light grey (10, 10, 11), white (14, 14, 15), black (0, 0, 0) and medium blue (0, 3, 13). The text is black on a grey background turning to white on a blue background when selected. Gadgets and display windows are highlighted for that 3-D look that is ever so popular with Commodore. The display is the norm for this type of program: two side-by-side windows with a small, vertical strip of gadgets in between; a group of control gadgets below each window and a strip (or three) of user definable gadgets on the bottom. The color palette is user definable through the standard palette requester accessable from the menu strip or an Amiga-key combo. The screen type can be set to lores (640 x 200), hires (640 x 400) or half-height. Lores and hires open full screens while half-height opens a hires screen that pulls up from below to cover 1/2 of your Workbench screen. Grabbing the title bar lets you adjust just where the half-height screen goes, just like a normal screen. To the left of each display window, there is a slider bar for those cases where the file/directory list is bigger than the window. Directly below is a string gadget for inputting the device name manually and directly above is another one for the subdirectories. Grouped below each window are the action gadgets. A small cluster of six list the devices selectable. I have them set to DF0, DF1, DH0, DH1, RAM and DEV. Changing them is easy, just CTRL-click on the one to change and fill in the blanks! The word DEV is special, bringing up a list of all AmigaDOS devices. The next three are ALL, CLR and COPY. ALL selects all FILES in the window and CLR unselects all files. COPY is special because it can do more than just that. If no file is selected, clicking on the COPY gadget cycles it through its functions: COPY, COPY AS, MOVE and DUPLICATE. Select a file (file group/directory) and click on the modified gadget to perform that function. COPY performs a standard file copy; COPY AS allows you to rename the file first; MOVE deletes the original file after copying and DUPLICATE copies not only the file, but also the protection bits, comment and date stamp depending on the setting in the menu. The final three are PARENT, MD and DELETE, which all act normal. Between the SOURCE and TARGET windows is a strip of 12/13 gadgets. The first is a double-headed arrow for swapping the source and target window contents. The second and third are left and right arrows for moving the source to the target and vice-versa. The next five tell the directory what attributes to show for the files. The options are: size, time, protection bits, nothing and something starting with the letter "c". The "c" option doesn't do anything apparent, and since there is no documentation....I'm stuck. The last four gadgets (one a appears when the final one is clicked on) are for cycling through the user-definable functions. AU2 has provisions for automatically listing, extracting and adding files to and from arc, LHarc and Zoo archives. Directory listings can be sorted by name, size, extension, date or time. The program even has an ICONIFY option in the menus. Most menu options have keyboard alternatives. FUNCTIONS ~~~~~~~~~ AU2 has the ability to put in 76 user-definable functions and comes with four built in. The four built in are excellent and quite useful. The first is TYPE, which can be changed to a HEX output by clicking on it without a file selected. It can also be shifted to an ASCII setting, which breaks the lines into 40 columns and adds a hex character count. The second built in function is ATTRIBUTE which is similar to ZIP in the requester it brings up. You can review and alter the key protection bits of any file. The third function is my favorite -- PICTURE. Picture will display any IFF file (though I've not tested IFF-24). The neat part is that by hitting the "I" key you toggle the interlace. Interlaced pictures are mapped to non-interlace and you scroll around with the mouse. Non-interlaced pictures are mapped to interlace. You can also hit the "H" key for hires to lores mapping. Hires pictures are mapped to lores and you can scroll around them with the mouse. This function DOES NOT work in HAM (for obvious reasons). You can use both toggles at once to zoom in on pictures, etc. Some hires b&w pictures I have are really excellent when mapped to a lores, noninterlaced screen -- it is like a zoom function. The final function is RENAME. It works like it should. It will not rename files to different directories -- use the MOVE option for that. Loading and saving config files is very easy -- just use the menu options or the Amiga-key equivalents. FINALLY ~~~~~~~ I don't normally use these types of programs, as I am pretty handy with the CLI and most of them I've run across are too obtrusive. AU2's half-height option combined with the iconify is a real plus. AU2 is a program that I will keep around and use when performing operations on large groups of files. Too bad there is no address included for the author.