X3Tree V 1.2 Copyright March 1997 Richard Wakelin. Shareware. See the end of this document for details. Contents 1. Disclaimer 2. Introduction 3. Installing X3Tree 4. The tree window 5. The file list window 6. Copying, moving and tagging files 7. Starting applications 8. Associating files 9. File list filtering 10. Viewing .pic (picture) files 11. Listening to .wve (sound) files 12. Future plans for X3Tree and other available programs 13. Known limitations 14. Contact address and other details 1. 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 X3Tree. 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. Do not contact Psion about this program, contact me at the email address at the foot of this page. 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/freeware) program. 2. Introduction ............... X3Tree12.zip contains the following files X3Tree.opa X3Tree2.opo Both these files are needed to run the program Help.opo Diskview.opo Both these files are optional. You are recomended to install Help.opo until you are used to all the features of X3Tree. Diskview.opo is an optional add on program that will appear in the menu when installed or you can place it in an opo directory and run it from there. The main features of X3Tree 1.2 are (a) A fast drawing, full expanded directory tree. (b) File tagging. (c) Moving, copying and deleting groups of tagged files. (d) Start the built in apps by selecting their files from the file list. (e) Start opo and opa applications by selecting them from the file list. (f) View .pic(picture) files by selecting them from the file list. (g) Listen to .wve(sound) files by selecting them from the file list. (h) Associate file types with applications of your choice. (i) Filter the file list to show only one type of file. (j) Open any file using any application of your choice. (k) All of the usual file management facilities found elsewhere. X3Tree has been written to ease the task of 3a/c file management, especially the task of moving and copying files between different directories and devices. Whats new in version 1.2 Files can now be associated with programs of your choice. Files can be opened with any apllication of your choice by menu command. File list an now be filtered to show selected file types only. New improved help system (optional). New graphical add on program Diskview (optional). Some minor bug fixes. 3. Installing X3Tree .................... Two options exist for installing X3Tree. The first is the traditional method. X3Tree.opa > \APP\ X3Tree2.opo > \APP\X3Tree\ help.opo > \APP\X3Tree\ (optional) diskview.opo > \APP\X3Tree\ (optional) Place X3Tree.opa in an \APP\ directory and X3Tree2.opo in \APP\X3Tree\. Help.opo and Diskview.opo (optional) should also be placed in \APP\X3Tree\. Install X3Tree.opa to the system screen. Below are instructions on how to do this. Press tab while in the system screen and choose Make directory from the Directory menu. Type app in the dialog box and press enter. Press tab again and use the arrow keys to move to the app directory. choose Make directory from the Directory menu, type X3Tree in the dialog box and press enter. This will create the directory structure M:\APP\X3Tree\. Place X3Tree.opa in the M:\APP\ directory and X3Tree2.opo in M:\APP\X3Tree\. Second method. Copy both X3Tree.opa and X3Tree2.opo to an app directory on any drive and install X3Tree.opa to the system screen in the usual way. Alternatively install all 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. It is better to use the first installation option as any future add on modules will be need to be installed in \APP\X3Tree\. 4. The tree window .................. This is the window om the left hand side of the screen. It displays a full expanded directory tree that can be scrolled up and down using the arrow keys and pg up-pg dn keys. The tree is fully expanded so that you can see all the directories and sub directories that exist an any drive. This window can display sub directories up to six levels deep. i.e. m:\sub1\sub2\sub3\sub4\sub5\sub6. This restriction is due to the size of the window although an average user will have no need to nest sub directories to such a level. You can view the contents of drives A:, M:, B: or the contents of the internal ROM drive. To move from drive to drive, press the A, M, B or R keys.The buttons at the top of the screen will indicate which drive is currently being displayed i.e. if the M button is depressed then that is the drive you are viewing. At the bottom of the screen is a small status bar which shows the current directory path. Both the tree and file list windows contain a scroll bar on their right hand side. This helps indicate how much of the display is currently off screen (the behaviour of this bar can be a bit erratic and needs further programming attention). To create a sub directory, move to a directory (or sub directory) and choose Create from the directory menu. To delete a directory choose Remove from the same menu. To open a directory press the Enter key. The menus in are self explanatory so I wont go into great detail here. The only thing worth mentioning is the files menu. This menu only appears in the tree window when files have been tagged and allows you to easily copy or move files to other directories or devices. See section 6 for more details of moving and copying files. 5. The file list window ....................... This is the window that is displayed on the right hand side of the screen. To move to this window use the right arrow or tab key. This shows which files, if any, are in a particular directory. This window does not attempt to show any sub directories that may be in a directory as this is clearly displayed in the tree window. The movement keys in this window are the same as for the tree window. The menus in this window are also self explanatory. As in the rest of the program, the menus that are displayed depend on the type of device you are looking at and whether any files are tagged. At the top of this screen are the sort buttons. These buttons allow the displayed file list to be sorted by name, size, type and date. Sorting by name or type sorts only by the first letter of a file name or extension. The order of sorting also changes each time you sort the list. For instance, the first time you sort by size the list will show the files in descending size order. Sort again and the list will show the files in ascending size order. This also applies alphabetically A..Z then Z..A. At the bottom of the file list window is a status bar showing the number of files in the current directory and the total size of these files in bytes. If you have tagged any files then the total size, in bytes, will be shown on the right hand side of the status bar. 6. Copying, moving and tagging files .................................... One of the reasons this program was written was to make the task of copying and moving files as easy as possible. Highlighted or tagged files are moved or copied from the file list window to the directory that is highlighted or arrowed in the tree window. To move between these two windows use the arrow or tab keys. To tag or untag a file in the file list window press the spacebar. The highlight will move down to the next line to ease the task of tagging whole lists of files (for deleting perhaps !). You can also use the shift and arrow keys to tag files in the same way as you do using the built in file manager. When you tag or untag a file its name and location is copied to, or removed from, a temporary data file. Think of this data file as being a clipboard. When files are tagged the menus will display various options for deleting, copying, moving and untagging the tagged files. Here is an example of copying or moving files. In the tree window go to the directory you wish to copy files from. Press enter to open the directory and tab to move to the file list window. Tag or highlight the file(s) you wish to copy or move. From the files menu choose copy or move. 7. Starting applications ........................ All the built in applications that use files (Word, Data, Sheet ect) can be started by selecting a file (pressing enter) in the file list window. For instance, open the DAT directory and select a data (.dbf) file. The Data application will start loaded with that file. Exiting the application returns to the file list window. OPO and OPA files can also be started by selecting them from the file list window. Selecting other types of files has no effect. (in future versions it will) *****NEW***** A new menu item has been added to this version. The Open file menu allows you to open (or try to open) any type of file using any application of your choice. If the file cannot be viewed using one of the application then the application will simply display a message and no harm will be done. 8. Associating files ...................... Associating files means linking a file extension to an application. You may wish to link .PIC (picture) files to a paint program or you may wish to link .TXT (text) files to a text viewer. Highlight a file in the file list window and press the Enter key. If the file extension is associated with a program, that program will start loaded with the file you just have selected. You can associate a file type with more than one program. A choice list will appear allowing you to choose which associated program to open the file. Choose File associations from the Special menu in the list window. 9. File list filtering ........................ The file list can be filtered to show only one type of file. Highlight a file and press the Diamond key. Only files with the same extension will be shown. Press the Diamond key again to show an unfiltered list. Alternatively use the menu option Special/Filter list. You may then type the extension you wish to filter by. 10. Viewing .pic (picture) files ................................. Psion .pic files can contain more than one picture. Typically a .pic file contains two picture (or bitmaps), one for the black plane and one for the grey plane of the screen. The icons on the system screen are an example of this. They can also contain only one or any number of pictures. X3Tree has a built in .pic file viewer that allows you to view all the pictures in a .pic file. When you select a .pic file from the file list window X3Tree first checks how may pictures are in the file. If only one picture exists then it is displayed on screen. If two pictures exist X3Tree checks if they are the same width and height. If they are then it is assumed that they are a black grey bitmap and both planes are loaded to the screen. If they are not the same width and height or if there are more than two bitmaps then a dialog box appears and you can view each bitmap in turn. 11. Listening to .wve (sound) files .................................. Psion .wve files are often supplied with third party applications, especially games, or you can create them yourself using the Record application on your 3a or 3c. To listen to a .wve file, highlight it in the file list and press the Enter key. (have a look in the ROM for some .wve files) 12. Future plans for X3Tree and other available programs ......................................................... Immediate plans for X3Tree are the introduction of file search and accessing remote drives. If you are the owner of a Psion Siena then a version of this program called SnFile is available. It can be downloaded from CIX or Compuseve and possibly other libraries or BBS. If you cannot find this program then contact me by email and i will send you UUencoded mail. 13. Known limitations .................... There is a limit to the number of directories or files that can be displayed at any one time. If you try to display a directory tree that contains more than 120 directories and sub directories or you open a directory that contains more than 140 files the program may exit prematurely. This is because of operating system memory limitations. Very few people should be bothered with this though. The program is also fairly memory hungry. When a tree or file list is displayed the program grabs a large enough chunk of memory to display up to 150 items. This is obviously a waste when only a few lines need to be displayed. I am currently experimenting with dynamic memory allocation which I hope will resolve this problem in future versions. 14. Contact address and other details ..................................... I hope you find this program useful. Please redistribute this program along with this text file. I have only uploaded this program to CIX and CIS so please cross post to any other library or BBS X3Tree is shareware. Hundreds of hours have been spent developing this program. IF you use this program on a regular basis then please consider paying for it. Send a small cash donation of £10 to the address below. If nothing else it will encourage me to develop the program further. Any comments or suggestions by email only please. Richard Wakelin 8 Ezard Street, Stockton On Tees, Cleveland, TS19 0BZ England UK Email rbenno@cix.compulink.co.uk Email 106305.466@compuserve.com