Ę Ę Find Pro II v 1.4.1 ============================================================================== Š 1992 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., Š 1992 Bill Monk/MonkWorks., All Rights Reserved. This utility can be copied but is copyrighted. You may make copies for others as long as no charge is involved and this document is included, but making copies for any commercial purpose is prohibited. It is available exclusively through Ziff Communications on-line services and electronic publishing projects. ============================================================================== Thanks for downloading Find Pro II. Version 1.4.1 fixes a number of bugs and adds features, many suggested by users. Find Pro is currently undergoing a rewrite which will add more features and incorporate more of the ideas sent in by loyal Find Pro users. However, that's still several months away. This version should fill in the gap a bit until the upcoming "Super Find Pro" slated to appear around March '93. If you have comments or suggestions, by all means, send them. (If you sent in ideas which didn't make it into this version, that's probably because they're going into the "Super" version rather than this interim version. ) Quite a few new commands have been added - see the "Buttons" section. Also Cmd-A to select "all drives", Cmd-A to select all found items, and selecting items by typing the first letter of a name. Some stuff that should be fixed hasn't been. That effort is going into the "Super" version; see the "Version 1.4.1 Changes" section. below Bill Monk 12/19/92 -------- Find Pro II is a utility which unlocks some of the power of System 7's fast disk search routine combined with some AppleEvent amusements. What's with the name? Well, in a reversal of hallowed tradition, this name -starts off- with meaningless festoons already draped around it, and as upgrades appear they'll have progressively simpler names until, who knows, maybe we'll end up with "IT" or something like that. Since FP2 looks a lot like the Find box in Apple's Finder, it should be mostly self explanatory. Pick a search criteria, hit Find, and see what happens. It runs fast - faster than the Finder. Balloon Help is there if you want it. Use the radio buttons to select whether the items it finds will be displayed in a "Hit List" or as a folder full of aliases to the found items. Find Pro can locate things 10-20 times as fast as Finder's one-at-a-time method. It's pretty easy to end up with several hundred aliases on your disk if you walk away while it's running. Searching is modeless: you can move the progress window around, or run it in the background. If you cancel a search before it completes, you have the option of keeping everything found up to that point, or just forgetting it. If a volume appears dimmed in the the "Search On" popup, it means that volume doesn't support the fast find mechanism. This usually occurs with some of the more "unusual" file servers such as TOPS or TCP/IP. If it happens to you, complain to your network vendor. Last I heard, Novell Netware for Mac didn't support fast find, but after several Find Pro users requested it, the company promised to support it in a future release. The next version of Find Pro will be able to search such volumes, albeit in a much more languid manner than normal. The Hit List ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This window appears once FP2 has found everything for you that it can (and the Hit List option is selected). On the left is a sorted (sordid?) list of found items. On the right the path to a selected item is displayed. If more than one item is selected, no path is shown. The Macintosh List Manager has a 32K limit, so it is definitely possible to find more stuff than will fit. I've found 2000 files with no problem, but be forewarned: Finding every file on your gigabyte drive which -isn't- named "Yakutsk" is not supported. Menus ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Standard stuff except for Options Menu ------------ Faster List Creation ------------------ When building its lists, FP2 looks at the disk(s) to figure out what kind of icon it should display with each item. This takes some time, but is only a problem on slow drives like CD-ROM. Faster List Creation turns off these disk accesses for much faster list display. This saves time but makes the Hit List harder to use, since there's no longer any way to tell folder from application, or file from alias. It's there if you search a lot of CD-ROMs, otherwise I think it's best to leave it turned off. Auto-Switch to Finder -------------------- To automagically bring the Finder to the front after Find Pro sends an AppleEvent to it, check this option. After showing items, opening windows, Get Info, etc. it's usually nice to get Find Pro out of the way in order to see what the Finder has done for us. This option makes it automatic - turn it off if desired, the settings are remembered just like everything else. The Buttons ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's what they do: Open ---- This sends AppleEvents to Apple's Finder, asking it to open each item that's selected in the left-hand list. Applications and Control Panels are launched, documents are opened (launching their app first, if need be), disks and folders open onto the desktop, sounds files play, aliases alias, servers mount, etc. If the Finder can't open something (say the Desktop Database files or some other secret Finder goodie) the Finder just beeps, or flashes its icon in the Application menu to ask you to bring the it forward so you can see it's explanation. There's a movable modeless, backgroundable, count-down, cancel dialog here. Mostly useful after inadvertently asking the Finder to open 500 files. Show ----- Sends AppleEvents to the Finder, asking it to show each item that's selected in the list. An item's parent folder is opened onto the Desktop and the item's icon is selected. If the item is already on the Desktop, it's just selected. Sometimes these are a bit hard to spot if you Desktop is as cluttered as mine is.... Another modeless count-down appears during processing. Move to Desktop -------------- Moves the selected items to the Desktop via AppleEvent. If you decide it was a mistake, use the "Put Away" button (or the Finder's "Put Away" command) to restore the items to their home folders. Yet another count-down display here, as with all these buttons. Put Away -------- Moves the selected items to their home folders via AppleEvent. This applies to items that are on the Desktop or in the Trash. If an item is already in it's home folder, nothing happens. This all works identically to the regular Finder command. Get Info ------- Asks the Finder to show us Get Info windows for the selected items. AliasÉ ------- Aliases the selected items into a folder of your choosing. Note that aliases of invisible items like the Desktop Database are pretty much useless, but they can be made if you wish. CopyÉ ------ Again uses AppleEvents to ask the Finder to copy the selected items. This can be handy since it's possible to select things from many different disks and copy them all to the same destination. Move to Trash ------------ The selected items are moved into the Trash. Delete ------ Deletes the selected items. There are some safety features here, in that Find Pro will not delete the Desktop Folder even if asked nicely. (If you aren't familiar with the Desktop Folder, it is just one of several normally-invisible items you can turn up with any search utility. Everything that's on the Desktop is actually in a folder by that name.) Again, there's a count-down display with a Stop button if needed. Munge... ------ Use this button if you want to change a files type or creator, or do more extensive resource editing. You need a resource editor for this to work. Ideally, you could pick any editing program, but time is short and this program is free, so right now the choices are limited to three common resource editors. The choices, in order of increasing power, are FileTyper (a shareware Finder info editor that I really like), ResEdit (the old standby), and Resorcerer (if you regularly use ResEdit and your time is worth more than $1/hour, you should check this thing out). If the chosen editor isn't running, Find Pro searches for it (with the usual speed) and launches it for you. Find Pro then sends the selected items to the editor, and switches the editor to the front. ResEdit and Resorcerer have Preference oyptions to show a Standard File Open dialog when they startup. If Find Pro has to search for and launch the editor, the editor could display this dialog. The dialog has _nothing_ to do with the items Find Pro is transmitting over the AppleEvents wires.The editor will not open the transmitted items until you dismiss the dialog. If the file being transmitted is already open in some other application, the editor will complain that the file is already open. Seeing this SF Open dialog is a little confusing. There is nothing Find Pro can do to circumvent. I keep my resource editor Prefs set to -not- show an open dialog at startup. It's easier in System 7 to drag items to an editor's icon anyway. Note: if you send a zillion files to another editor, you will have to wait while it tries to open them all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 1.4.1 Changes -- Fixed Cmd-F, broken by 1.4 Changed name of Edit command to Munge, to better reflect its gearhead orientation. Better status indication during searching and launching resorce editors. Added Balloon Help for new buttons in Hit List window. Cleaned up some visual glitches. Version 1.4 changes. -- Many new Hit List buttons added (see "The Buttons", above), including Edit. Cmd-A now selects "search on all drives" in the Find window, and selects all items in the Hit List window. You can type the first letter of a Hit List item's name to select it. When the Hit List first appears, the Path info is now correctly displayed. The Find window stays open when the Hit List appears. Cmd-V no longer pastes twice. "Delete" now deletes all selected items, not just the first. I know - it still doesn't delete non-empty folders - next version! Loads somewhat faster. Various minor bugs fixed. Stuff that hasn't changed. --- No changes were made to the list filling. Some people really hate seeing the Hit List fill, others like it. The real solution is some sort of progress indicator, which will be forthcoming. For now, the behavior remains the same: if filling the list will take a significant amount of time, then the drawing is visible as the scroll bars provide some kind of feel for how much remains to be drawn. Still no searching of partial directories. I know this is annoying for folks with really large drives, however the fast find simply doesn't support this in a way that makes sense. Do this in the Finder: Search inside a folder, but type the name of an item that's inside a folder that's inside the folder you're searching in. It takes the Finder a ridiculous amount of time to find the item. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Caveats ------- Watch out for weird situations when sending Open or Show AppleEvents. It's possible to stress out programs in ways you might not expect. Not every application is prepared to open documents no matter what else it's trying to do. There's an Apple-verified bug in the the S7 fast search routine which crops up when certain search criteria are applied to networked volumes (File Sharing, etc.). Find Pro works around these as best it can, but in a few cases you might see a warning about this problem. Rather than returning erroneous results in these cases, FP2 asks you to choose another search criteria. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tech Support for Find Pro is available on the ZiffNet/Mac service on CompuserServe: GO ZMC:DOWNTECH. Or you can contact me, the author, directly via Email. Suggestions, bug reports, etc. always welcome. Many thanks once again to Mark Simmons for his 32-by-32 artistry.. Bill Monk, 4/30/92 CIS: 72511,301 72267,2124 AppleLink: MONK ============================================================================== Standard disclaimer stuff: FindPro II was written by Bill Monk for Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Though provided free of charge, it is copyrighted software. Copies may be made as long as this document is included and you do not charge for the copies. ============================================================================== Though built and tested carefully on a range of Macintosh models and various storage devices, this software may contain errors or omissions, or may interact in strange ways with other software. All responsibility for use/misuse of this software remains with you, the user. Use at your own risk. No warranty, guarantee, or remedy of any kind is provided, which if you think about it is identical to what you get with those business productivity packages costing three figures, except I do respond to mail quickly. ============================================================================== Find Pro II is Copyright Š 1991-1992 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. Copyright Š 1991-1992 Bill Monk/MonkWorks All Rights Reserved. ==============================================================================