Infowin V 1.1 Copyright May 1996 Richard Wakelin 

Freeware

Disclaimer

Use this program at your own risk.
The author is not responsible for any loss of data that may occur
as a result of using Infowin.
The Psion logo and other words used in this program are registered
trademarks of Psion plc.
Psion have no connection with this program. The Psion logo and
other trademarks are used for decorative purposes only.
The "Independent software" logo is used to emphasise that this
program has been written independently of Psion and is not the
name of a company.

Having said all the above I (the author) have been using this
program for about 3 months before release without suffering any
loss of data.
I cannot guarantee that there are no hidden bugs waiting to be
discovered so make sure that you back up your data before using
this (or any other shareware) program.

Whats new in this version
.........................
various user reported bugs have been fixed.

Users can now skip the fancy start up screen by pressing enter twice
when starting the program. This jumps straight to the 'Loading program'
screen(when various drawings are taking shape on a hidden screen).
NB. If you press enter twice VERY quickly the above will not work.

The program now handles files without extensions.

About Infowin
..............
Infowin is a free program that I have written for my own use and
have made publicly available should others find it useful. It
is called Infowin because it started off as a disk information
program. File management utilities were only added as an afterthought.

Installing Infowin
...................
Copy both Infowin.opa and Infowin2.opo to an app directory on
any drive and install Infowin.opa to the system screen in the
usual way. Alternatively install both files to any directory you
choose although this will mean having to navigate to that directory
when installing to the system screen. What ever you choose make
sure that both files go into the same directory or the program
will not start.

Using Infowin
..............
The program is fairly simple to use and doesn't need much explaining
here. However there are a few basic things that may need explaining.
There are two basic things to remember when using Infowin.
Pressing the enter key opens things and pressing the esc key
closes things. Also remember that pressing a key that has the name
of a drive (A, B, M...) will show details of that drive. The left
and right arrow keys will also change between the A, M and B drives.

Another important thing to understand is the clipboard. This is
a temporary data file that is created when the program starts
and is deleted when the program exits. Filenames are copied to
and removed from the clipboard by pressing the spacebar or using
the menu options. It is the filenames and their locations that
are copied to this file and not the files themselves. To view
the clipboard select the view clipboard menu option or press Psion/k.
Press tab to view a drop down list of all the filenames that are
on the clipboard. The purpose of the clipboard is to allow you
to easily copy or move files between different directories and
disks. It is similar to  the windows clipboard. You copy filenames
to the clipboard and then copy or move them to different directories.
Again remember that it is the name of the files and their location
that is copied to the clipboard and not the files themselves.

Disks can be hot swapped at any time while using Infowin. The
display will update automatically. For this reason it is best
to keep Infowin in a directory on the internal drive M: 

When you open a drive door both SSD drives as well as the link
port C are disconnected from the system. If you have Infowin installed
on an SSD in drive A or B, and you open either of those drive
doors, Infowin will not be able to read its program files and
a system message will appear telling you to replace disk A or
B. You can replace the disk and continue and the screen will update
to show details of any new disk that has been inserted. If you
must keep Infowin on an SSD and want to swap disks while using
Infowin it is best to turn your Psion off, swap disks and turn
on again. The display will then update to show details of the
new disk. (That is provided you have not removed the disk containing
Infowin itself)

The menus and dialog boxes will reflect the type of disk currently
being accessed.
For instance, you cannot delete a file from a ROM drive so the
file menu will not offer you this choice. If a directory is empty
or contains only one file then the sort menu will not be displayed.

Known bugs or limitations
.........................

Only two that I know of.

While Infowin is running it constantly checks drives A and B to
see if a new disk has been inserted or if a disk has been removed.
If you switch to the system screen or another program Infowin
detects this and stops checking the drives until it comes to the
foreground again. This sometimes fails. Perhaps once in every
30 switches to the system screen Infowin carries on checking the
drives. The only problem this may cause is that Infowin will hog
processor time and slow down other programs. If you notice this
or you see the two little disk icons in the system screen flashing
on and off, switch  back to Infowin and then back to the system
screen again. This always solves the problem. Another way is to
simply exit Infowin when you have finished using it.

Infowin has a limit on the number of directories or files
that can be displayed at one time. If you try to display a directory tree
that contains more than 115 directories and sub directories or
you open a directory that contains more than 140 files the program
will probably crash. This is because of operating system memory
limitations. Very few people should be bothered with this though.
There is also a limit to the number of nested directories that can be 
displayed in the tree view. This is 8 which should be enough for most people.


I hope you find this program useful.
I will try to implement any suggestions or bug reports sent to
my email address provided they are not to time consuming.

Richard Wakelin

rbenno@cix.compulinkco.uk