Version history for FileRunner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.5.1 - 1999-12-30
Fixes
- Y2K bug fixed! :-) Year 2000 would show up as 100 instead of 00...
- When you click in a text window and then pressed pageup/pagedown
you would scroll two pages. Fixed.
- Dialogs are now placed in the middle of the FileRunner window
instead of in the middle of the screen (which was very annoying
when running a Xinerama setup and the dialogs would pop up smack
in the middle between the two displays...)
- Executes 'wish' instead of 'wish8.0'
- Sorry, did not have the opportunity to create Solaris binaries in
this release. Will fix that in a week or so.
I hope to make a more full featured release soon with some other
stuff I want to get fixed/added but at least this release will get
rid of that stupid Y2K bug (hopefully)...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.5 - 1998-06-02
News
- Created new configuration browser, to ease browsing and editing
the rather long list of options. Invoked with Configuration->Edit
Configuration.
- Automatically saves configuration (incl. hotlist) on
exit. Configurable through config(save_conf_at_exit) in the
configuration browser.
- Mouse buttons used for wheel on wheelie-mice are now configurable
through config(mwheel,neg) and config(mwheel,pos) in the
configuration browser. These default to 4 and 5, respectively and
corresponds nicely with the following kind of "Pointer" section in
an Xfree 3.3.2 (or later) XF86Config file:
Section "Pointer"
Protocol "Auto"
Device "/dev/mouse"
# Choose button events for wheel up/down actions
ZAxisMapping 4 5
BaudRate 1200
Resolution 100
EndSection
- FileRunner will now create relative links (as default) instead of
absolute links when using the S-Link and S-LnAs
buttons. Configurable via the config(create_relative_links)
option. (A relative link is one that points to something of the
form "../../foo". An absolute link looks like "/a/b/c/foo").
Thanks to Norbert Erkeland for this code.
- FileRunner now has the option of whether or not to run "pwd" after
cd'ing to a new directory to check where it ended up. This is
controlled by the variable config(cd_pwd) which is per default on
(which mimics the behaviour of older FileRunner releases). If you
set it to off, FileRunner will infer the new path from the old
path. This makes a difference if you cd to a link that points to a
directory. There is a similar config option config(ftp,cd_pwd) for
the FTP case.
- You can now colorize the middle command buttons in a supported
way. Look at the config(middle_button_colors) in the configuration
browser.
- Added FTP resume background (async) download. See Utilities menu.
- Added ForEach button that runs a command for each selected file.
This command is very close to "Utilities->Run Command On Selected..."
but instead of running one command on many files it runs one command
per file.
- Added "Etc->Recurse Command...". This runs a command recursively
in the current directory and downwards using the Unix find utility.
Fixes
- ~/.fr/tmp is now used for temporary FTP files (primarily used when
you "view" a file in an FTP directory). Using /tmp/USER_fr_tmp was
a security risk, since anyone could create /tmp/USER_fr_tmp and
put soft links in here that would get wiped when the user viewed a
file by that name.
- FileRunner no longer does a CD to the root directory when logging
in to a remote FTP site.
- Last downloaded filename through HTTP is saved for next download.
Changes
- FileRunner is now explicitly a part of the Open Source movement,
as shown when choosing "File->About...".
- "Settings" is now called "Configuration" consistently within
FileRunner. I've done a search/replace in the User Guide but
I'm sure it's not perfect...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.2 - 1998-02-15
Fixes
- Bug: "Error in startup script: can't read "glob(gui,color_cursor)": no such
element in array"
- Wrong date displayed in FTP listings sometimes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.1 - 1998-01-04
News
- FileRunner is now distributed under the GNU General Public License.
Let's hope it turns up in even more places. Redhat, are you listening? :-)
(Btw: No one ever bothered to pay $20 for a commercial license, but I have
received a bunch of cool postcards. Keep 'em coming :-)
- Support for "wheel"-mice. Scroll lists and text using the mouse wheel.
Thanks to Colas Nahaboo for this. Config parameter: config(mwheel,delta)
determines how many lines to scroll for each wheel click. Shift-wheel
scrolls one line.
- You can now change the color of the cursor.
Fixes
- Fixed "checkowner" function when copying/deleting files.
- Can now parse FTP site reactor.actlab.com (yucky WinNT host :-).
Doesn't read dates from this site correctly, but who cares...
- Various minor stuff.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4 - 1997-09-07
News
- Supports Tcl/Tk 8.0 only. Get it! :-)
- Added Batch FTP download. This is useful when you want to select a
number of files for downloading when the files are not in the same
directory or even on the same site. You can now browse any FTP site,
add the selected files to the batch list, then later start the batch
download and go do something else while the files download. See the
Etc menu.
- HTTP downloading. This was just too easy to implement for me to be
able to resist :-) Just choose "Etc->HTTP Download" and enter an
URL to download. You don't have to bother with adding "http://"
if you don't want to. Then choose a filename to save the download to.
You can also enter an HTTP proxy in the config(http,proxy) parameter.
(Do a "Settings->Save Settings..." followed by a "Settings->Edit
Settings..." to see this parameter)
- Added Help->Tips menu. This contains a few tips on usage, like how to
color your command buttons if you want to.
- Foreground color for selection is now configurable.
- User-configurable button commands now get an extra argument: The mouse
button that was used to press the button. This means you can let your
buttons do different things if pressed with different mouse buttons.
Unfortunately this also means you need to add a new argument to the
command. (Values: 1:Left 2:Right 3:Middle) See chapter 7 in the User's
Guide.
- Added the following entry to the config(view,extensions) parameter:
{ {rpm -qilp {%s}}
{*.rpm}
-viewtext }
This lets you view .rpm files. You'll have to put this in yourself
if you already have a config file.
Fixes
- FileRunner now handles file names with any characters allowed by the
file system. EXCEPTION: When copying directories the directory names
(source and destination) must not contain tick-marks "'" since this
is used as an escape character. I doubt this will be a problem in
the real world, though.
FileRunner used to have a real problem with file names containing ", },
], $ etc. You don't want to know what a headache Tcl gave me with its
evaluation rules... AARGH!
- "Show All Files" now also correctly shows file beginning with a dot . in the
hyper-menu.
- Miscellaneous fixes.
Changes
- Because of the new improved file name handling I've had to change the
config(cmd,arc) command. This is now gone and replaced with
config(cmd,archive). (The change was made only so I could enforce
a new default value for this variable, which I cannot if people already
have this variable in their .fr/config file.) The format for this command
is now simply "archive-command {%s}" where {%s} will be substituted with
the directory name at runtime. Do a Save Settings followed by Edit Settings
and see the config file for more info on this.
- The system wide config file is now called "config" and should be placed
directly under the FileRunner installation directory.
Stupid stunts
- There are bits and pieces here and there in the code referring to WIN32...
Well, I started to port FileRunner to Windows but I just got rather fed up
with it after having received a prolonged exposure to Windows programming...
It shouldn't be too hard to finish, though.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3 - 1997-03-30
New stuff
- FileRunner will now cache reads from FTP directories. (If you go to a
previously visited FTP directory, it will fetch it from the cache.) The
cache (all of it) will be invalidated when you press the refresh button (the
one with two arrows chasing each other). The number of directories
cached is configurable via the config(ftp,cache,maxentries) parameter.
I have a feeling this feature will come back and bite me... Tell me if
you see something fishy. :-)
- Shows estimated time of arrival in both relative and absolute time.
(I discovered relative time estimate wasn't very useful when it showed
something like 1200 minutes...:-). Estimate is now calculated over the
average transfer speed during the last two minutes.
- New command line argument "-iconified" will start FileRunner in iconified
mode.
- Config files are now saved under ~/.fr/ (which is now a directory). The
.fr file is called .fr/config, the .fr_cmds file is called .fr/cmds and
so on.
Fixes
- Couldn't handle files with the characters " { } in the file name. This
fix unfortunately will have the effect of incorrectly sorting files with
spaces in them last in the list.
- If you run FR as root, having done "su" in a user shell, FilerRunner now
shows the correct "user@machine" in the top status line.
- Doesn't barf anymore if it detects a socket or a pipe in an FTP listing.
- I got a question on how to use the "-remote openFile()" argument to netscape
if you wanted to have a default rule for viewing .html files. The answer was
trickier than I though because of tclsh's hairy quotation and evaluation
rules. Anyway, here is how you do it: First, add the following to your
config(view,extensions) variable:
{ {viewhtml {%s}}
{*.html} }
Then create a script called viewhtml that looks like this:
#!/bin/csh -f
netscape -remote openFile\("$argv"\)
That should do it. The problem was that tclsh won't do the normal evaluation
on lists inside ( ). That's why you have to do this work-around with the
external script.
- Should now correctly work with Windows based ftp deamons. Thanks to
Colas Nahaboo for this fix.
- Misc bugs fixed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2.1 - 1997-01-18
Fixes
- The "Find file" function now behaves better. It was stupid sometimes.
- Now handles trouble converting FTP dates gracefully. If you have the
timezone set to GMT+xx on your computer, there seems to be a bug in
"clock scan" that prevents it from converting date strings with GMT+xx
in them. The result is that dates might be wrong. Work-around: Use
another way of denoting the time zone, like MET or PST or whatever.
- Select-all button didn't update the status line with selected/total...
- A couple of other small bugs fixed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2 - 1997-01-14
Features
- "Find file" function added both for unix files and ftp sites. (Uses the
"site exec locate" command to search FTP sites).
- Added chmod button and GUI requester. Should be fairly intuitive.
- Copy with resume for FTP added. Let's you continue an FTP transfer that
was aborted. Great when Netscape drops an FTP download for no reason...
- History is now saved to disk between invocations of FileRunner.
- Shell commands are now always executed in the background. A small
"R" to the right of the command line will turn red when one or more
commands are executing. More than one command can be executed
simultaneously, output will be intermixed in the output window.
Changes
- FTP transfer speed measurement is now more correct.
- New chapter on which files FileRunner uses added to the online guide. (10.2)
- Minor smaller things mainly affecting the GUI.
Bug fixes
- Fixed: Mixes dates for ftp files (thinks some files are created 1997, when
they were created late 1996).
- Fixed: "Copy As" for directories: "can't read "destfile": no such variable"
- Fixed: Error when copying FTP files that are links.
- Fixed: Searching in the viewer or internal editor affected the selection.
Notes
- Don't run FileRunner 2.1.3 on Tcl/Tk 8.0a1. It's too buggy. Tcl/Tk that is.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.2 - 1996-12-08
Features
- Fully user-defined bindings for to the View, UnPack and UnArchive
operations. Re-generate the .fr settings file and see how they work.
Warning: your old changes to the config(cmd,unarc,xx), config(cmd,unpack,xx)
and config(cmd,arclist,xx) variables will not be used any more. See also
below on "New config default values".
- You can now FTP to non-default ports. The format is
ftp://ftp.foo.com:8080/pub/bar
Just leave the port stuff (:8080) out if you connect to port 21
(normal FTP).
Bug fixes
- Stupid "Can't find $USER variable" bug should be gone. FR will now look
for the $LOGNAME variable if $USER cannot be found.
- FR now correctly resets iconname after an aborted FTP transfer.
- Matching on file name extensions are now case insensitive.
- FTP file listings now a little more robust. (Couldn't handle wuarchive
listings before).
- Sometimes FR came up with incorrect left/right start directories.
- Won't run the file panel updater if you're entering text in a text
entry. (Since this will take the focus away from the entry widget
and you don't notice you'll start typing keyboard shortcuts for
FR commands... Bad :-)
New config default values:
- You HAVE to fix your config(view,extensions) variable to reflect the new
settings in this variable. For example, the rule for viewing .tar.gz
files is now in this variable. If you just want to get the default
value for this variable into your .fr file, 1: edit the FR settings,
2: delete the parameter and 3: save, then 4: exit. 5: restart FR, 6:
save settings. Now the default value for this parameter will be in your
.fr file. If you're running FR for the first time you don't have to
bother with this.
set config(view,extensions) {
{ {xmikmod {%s}}
{*.mod.gz *.s3m *.mtm *.stm *.xm *.uni *.mod} }
{ {timidity {%s}}
{*.midi.gz *.midi *.mid.gz *.mid} }
{ {xv -gamma 2.0 {%s}}
{ *.bmp *.iff *.jpg *.pbm *.pgm *.png *.ppm *.tga
*.tif *.tiff *.xbm *.xpm *.gif} }
{ {gzip -dc {%s} | ghostview -}
{ *.ps.gz } }
{ {ghostview {%s}}
{ *.ps } }
{ {xanim {%s}}
{*.avi *.fli *.flc *.mpg} }
{ {gzip -cd {%s} | tar tvf -}
{ *.tgz *.taz *.tar.z *.tar.gz }
-viewtext }
{ {tar tvf {%s}}
{*.tar}
-viewtext }
{ {unzip -lv {%s}}
{*.zip}
-viewtext }
{ {lha -v {%s}}
{*.lha}
-viewtext }
{ {gzip -cd {%s}}
{*.gz}
-viewtext }
}
- The new parameter for unarchiving stuff.
set config(cmd,unarc,extensions) {
{ {gzip -cd {%s} | tar xfBp -}
{*.tgz *.taz *.tar.z *.tar.gz} }
{ {tar xfBp {%s}}
{*.tar} }
{ {unzip -oqq {%s}}
{*.zip} }
{ {lha -x {%s}}
{*.lha} }
}
- The new parameter for unpacking stuff.
set config(cmd,unpack,extensions) {
{ {gzip -d {%s}}
{*.gz} }
}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1 - 1996-11-03
Small features/other
- Changed to use Tcl/Tk 7.6/4.2. You can still run on 7.5/4.1 but
you'll have to edit the scripts.
- Sort on reverse time added.
- New platform support: AIX.
- Support for system wide .fr file. (Sourced before the user's .fr file).
- FTP sorting on time now implemented.
- FTP: Selecting "show all files" now works.
Bug fixes
- Editing shell command color works.
- Usage of "tar" internally now doesn't use the -B flag (for HPUX).
- Using Tcl/Tk 7.6/4.2 seems to have fixed the infamous "grab failed" problem.
- Misc fixes.
Documentation
- Added a FAQ file with know bugs and common Q's and A's.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1 - 1996-10-27
Features
- You can now copy both to and from an FTP site.
- Recursive copying of directories both to and from an FTP site.
- Makedir, Delete and Rename works in FTP. Recursive delete of FTP
directories implemented too.
- Rule based configuration of FTP site logins. For example always
login with username X and password Y to sites matching *.Z.com using
proxy P etc. See more in the online guide, chapter 8.8.
- Icon name now shows estimated time of arrival (ETA) for FTP transfers.
- Select All/Select None toggle button added to the lower right
ofthe file list panes. This is the button with letter S on it.
- If you enter a directory that doesn't exist you get the choice
of editing the faulty directory or create it. This is a convenient
way of creating new directories.
- The middle mouse button in the file list now work the same way
as mouse button 1 + ctrl. It doesn't deselect anything but just
toggles the previous selection. Try it. See chapter 3.3.4.1
for a list of available mouse operations.
Smaller features/changes
- When a new directory is created, all it's parent directories are created
also if they don't already exist.
- The escape button now works to exit the text viewer and editor.
- The Page up/down, Home/End keys work in the text viewer and editor without
first clicking in it.
- Default colors are changed to a cool metallic green. Just change it if you
don't like it...
- The Abort button is called Stop now.
Documentation
- Reworked chapter 8 about FTP.
- Reworked chapter 3.3.4.1 about mouse buttons in the file list. Here you
can now find a list of mouse operations available.
- Misc. changes.
Bug fixes
- User defined bindings from file extensions to action (e.g. .jpg ->
launch image viewer) are now searched before the built-in bindings.
- FTP now correctly handles filenames with spaces in them,
- Hopefully the infamous "grab failed: application already has grab"
will be a little less frequent. There is still a bug inside the Tk
menu code that can trigger this bug.
- Move on FTP file crashed FR. (It can't move FTP files yet, but it
shouldn't crash...)
- The recursive directory menu now correctly handles filenames with
spaces in them.
- More misc. bug fixes.
There are new default values for the some parameters. If you already
have a .fr file, you can see below what the new defauls are:
set config(gui,color_select) "#f1a9ec43aa9d"
set config(gui,color_scheme) "#d1f0dfbebd10"
set config(view,extensions) {
{ {xmikmod {%s}} { *.mod.gz *.s3m *.mtm *.stm *.xm *.uni *.mod } }
{ {timidity {%s}} { *.midi.gz *.midi *.mid.gz *.mid } }
{ {xv -8 {%s}} { *.bmp *.iff *.jpg *.pbm *.pgm *.png *.ppm
*.tga *.tif *.tiff *.xbm *.xpm *.gif } }
{ {gzip -dc {%s} | ghostview - } { *.ps.gz } }
{ {ghostview {%s}} { *.ps } }
}
set config(cmd,touch) "touch"
set config(cmd,du) "du -s"
Known bugs
- There is still a problem with the grab failed thing that can pop up here
and there. It seems to be a problem in the Tk menu implementation.
Anyone have any ideas how to get around this?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0 - 1996-09-24
Features:
- Added shell windows. Activated by the button to the right of the up-dir
button at the top of the file list panes. This pops up a small built-in
shell that lets you run commands inside FileRunner. Like a simple xterm/
shell session. The "current directory" of the left and right shell is
always synchronized with the "current directory" of the respective file
list panels. See the online guide for more on this.
- Asynchronous file operations added. Instead of pressing the left mouse
button over the command buttons (like copy, delete etc...) you press the
right mouse button over the buttons and the command is executed
asynchronously (in the background).
For some buttons, this is not implemented (where the operation is very fast
anyway, like doing soft links). This IS implemented for FTP,
which means you can mark 25 files and press the right mouse button
over the Copy button and have 25 parallell copyings going to the same
server... Be careful with this!
The drawback with asynchronous operations is that it won't tell you
if things go wrong during a copy, etc (for some operations, though
it will print this to the standard error output for FileRunner).
It will also increase the risk that the file panels aren't showing
correct information (you'll have to use the Update button). For
ftp transfers, it will usually take longer since it has to start
another ftp session for every file it copies (in parallell).
- New config opttion [config(view,extensions)] that holds general rules for
which viewer to invoke on which file. For example *.jpg launches the
image viewer and *.avi launches the movie viewer. This is now fully
user-configurable.
- Abort button added. This tries to abort the current command. For normal
file access commands (copy, move etc) it can only abort between two
files, not in the middle of operating on a file (in the middle of copying
a file). For FTP, you can abort in the middle of a transfer. The FTP
link will be closed when you do this, but reopened the next time you
access an FTP file.
- In conjunction with the abort button, added the clone button. Only these
two buttons may be pressed during execution of a command, like a long
FTP transfer, for example. The clone operation is gone from the File menu.
- Added back button (arrow left). Works just as the back button in
Netscape.
- Added "Settings->Edit xxx color". Changes GUI colors on the fly.
- Added "Settings->Edit xxx font". Changes GUI fonts on the fly.
- New interface for User-defined buttons. See online guide.
Small features:
- Selection in file list panes now produce list of files when exported
to other apps (or inside FileRunner).
- Close button added to text viewer and text editor. (The little cross)
- "normal" Save option added to text editor menu. Don't use "save",
then "quit" when editing config settings, use "save&quit"
instead... (Or the config won't be read back in)
- File list panes now show selected / total entries.
- Added geometry config options that let's you set the size and position
(in normal X11 syntax) for the main window, the text viewer window and
the Quick-editor window, respectively.
[config(geometry,main), config(geometry,textviewer),
config(geometry,qedit)]
- Added "Settings->Set left start dir", "Setttings->Set right start dir"
that saves your position in the file list panels for next time
you start. Quicker than editing the settings file by hand. You have
to save your settings to store it to the .fr file.
- Added "Settings->Set window pos/size". Sets the config variable for
the main window geometry [config(geometry,main)]. You have to save
your settings to store it to the .fr file.
- Added command "Utilities->Check Size of selected..." that counts the
size of selected files and directories and shows the result
in kilobytes. Note that this uses the du -s command and you might
have to add the -k flag here to get the answer in kilobytes on some
platforms (like Solaris 2.x). Do that in the Settings->Edit Settings
command [config(cmd,du)].
- Added "Utilities->Swap Windows" that swaps the left and right directories
shown.
- Added a "little" keyboard support. If you set the config variable
config(keyb_support) to 1, FileRunner activates keyboard support.
Currently this is not very extensive. See online guide for more
info on this.
Config variable config(keyb_listb_support) has changed name to
config(keyb_support) and changed semantics to mean general
keyboard support on/off.
- If you press the right mouse button in the directory entry, a requester
pops up asking you to type a new path. This is sometimes faster than
going to the directory entry and then clearing it, and then entering
the new directory.
- Changed the Update button to an iconized button. Due to lack of
space. Sorry for this, it makes it harder to understand...
Bugfixes:
- Commands will now tell you if there are stuff they cannot do, like
doing a soft link from an FTP file. (Instead of just doing nothing)
- Window is repainted correctly during long FTP transfers. This also makes
the window react to the quit-window (delete) command sent to it from the
window manager during transfers.
- Bugfix: When history got longer than xx entries, it got truncated
to 0... Now only the oldest entries are deleted (as it should be)
- Exiting FTP connections is now faster/more reliable.
- FTP client now changes server socket for data connections on every command.
Sometimes FTP servers had problems with using the same server socket
every time, giving error codes 425 and 500 (?).
- Bugfix: When deleting a directory displayed by FileRunner, it would
crash. (Stupid bug, since it was designed to handle this...)
- Bugfix: Sometimes FR would fail with "grab failed: another application
has grab" It looks like the grab fails for a reason I cannot determine.
It shouldn't fail. A workaround for this is that you now get a warning if
a grab fails. If you don't do anything stupid (like trying to start another
command before the first one is finished) you should be OK. Anyone got an
idea why this happens and how to handle it better?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2 - 1996-08-24
- Default "unzip {%s}" command changed to "unzip -oqq {%s}"
You have to change this in your .fr file if you already have a .fr file.
- No more crashes when FileRunner tries to stat a file that disappeared
between getting the directory list and the actual stat'ing.
- Viewing .gz files now works. (Just right-click on any gzipped text file)
- RunCmd and C-Select button moved to Utilities menu.
- S-LnAs (Soft-Link As..) command button added.
- Copying links: Copying a link to a file will copy the file, not the
link. Copying a link to a directory will copy the directory, not the
link. This is new behaviour.
- Fixed Makefile.cc and ext.c so it will compile on Unixware and IRIX
- Color for selection in listbox now configurable.
[config(gui,color_select)]
- Fixed: Choosing a list of files, then pressing Edit or View(Image).
(This is supposed to pass the whole list of files to the editor/image
viewer)
- Added mod and midi extensions and mod and midi player commands.
[config(cmd,play,sound,mod) and config(cmd,play,sound,midi)]
- Added config option to allow listboxes to take focus when clicked. Gives
some more control over keyboard access to the file list. Default off.
[config(keyb_listb_support)]
- Added config options to decide whether you want FileRunner to ask "Are
you sure?" when deleting directories or files, respectively.
[config(ask,dir_delete) and config(ask,file_delete)]
- FTP transfers now show total average speed at the end of the transfer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1 - First public release 1996-08-11
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.0 - Internal release
