On 1 Feb 01 at 5:05, owner-arachne-digest@arachne wrote: >Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 19:36:26 -0500 >From: Clarence Verge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: Final word on quick deleting. ... >DC (Dos Commander) is VERY small (written in ASM) looks just like mc, and ... >The other one was DN (Dos Navigator v1.51). The source is available. ... >You can find both together and MORE on this page: >http://www.geocities.com/rlcgreen/fileman2.htm Hi list, deleting files is only part of the work these file managers are supposed to do. I am still using Norton Commander 4.0, because I am to lazy to do all the necessary configuration, but there are features that can be extremely valuable for advanced DOS users. Of course, it depends what you expect such a program to do: 1. Reproduce basic NC functions on a freeware or shareware base This is what DC or VC do. If you want only that and want to use the filemanager inside of other applications, you might be interested in minimizing program size and memory requirement. DC seems to be the smallest one. IIRC it is also available on the Arachne homepage, and it includes a file editor that can open incredibly large files. 2. Use the file manager to open (view and edit) files Already NC allows you to associate certain file extensions with one or more viewers or applications - but the total of associations is limited to 35. This might be a reason to look for a more advanced file manager (I am not sure abaout VC?). I found two very good ones: a) CONNECT or CNS (you will probably find it at Clarence's link) It is a huge program with many features you probably do not need. So it may be a problem to run it from a DOS shell within other programmes. If you want to use it all the time, you should consider a task switcher. Even in the basic functions it seems to be somehow quicker than Norton Commander. The possibilities of customization (coloured directory listing, associating file extensions with applications) are much broader. There is a lot of utilities and communication stuff in it which I had no time to test. But there is one feature that I have met only in this program: It has an excellent built-in HTML viewer that can be customized for different codepages. I know that Arachne is a great offline viewer, too. But on a PC386 it is very slow to call core.exe just to read a single HTML file. And if you want to read Czech or Russian text with the common (Western) HTML viewers you will have to convert every file, before you can view it. CONNECT allows you to configure the codepage. Files are converted while viewing. If you like to download multilingual information from the web and archive it on your hard disk CONNECT will probably be the best tool you can get. b) NDN, DN, DOS Navigator (Clarence mentioned it) There several different versions and similar programme names. I am talking about a Russian programme that is still under development. It contains most of the advanced features offered by CONNECT and still other ones eg. handling of screens and text mode windows. The latest versions are very interesting, but not very stable. So I dare not to replace NC with this one, yet. The built-in help is in Russian. Even if it is probably not perfect, yet, there is one reason why you should look at this ongoing project from time to time. Obviously the authors intend to provide a support for FTP online file management. In the history information it claims to work under Windows, but I did not get it to work. 3. Online file management The last feature belongs already to another category. Unfortunately there is no DOS file manager to fit into it. This is one of three reasons which prevents me from "deltree c:\windows". If I need to upload files to my website I almost exclusively use Windows Commander 3.53 (there are later versions, but IIRC with some kind of shareware limitation). It is a Windows application, but you can install it under DOS - everything fits into one directory. It automatically logs in to pre-defined FTP sites and allows you to copy, remove, delete files online and offline without any limitations. This one is terribly needed under DOS. But may be it is technically impossible, I do not know, I am only a user. Hi Michael, you wrote that you want to implant a file manager into Arachne's GUI. Somebody said this could rather be done by external programs. I think the directory listing in Arachne deserves some improvement: - more detailed file information, e.g. dates - display the title tag in HTML files - sort feature - (if possible) a more practical FTP support IMHO these are functions that do not just duplicate common file managers, but respond to the specific needs of online and offline browsing. Regards Christof Lange _______________________________________________ Christof Lange <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Prokopova 4, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic phone: (+420-2) 22 78 18 00 / 22 78 20 02, telefax: 22 78 18 01 http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov
