Hi Jack

Replying to a message of Jack Stein to Paul Marwick:

 JS> I reckon thats a point for OS2 Commander, considering it *does* manage
 JS> files and their FILES.BBS entries on all but filenames over 13
 JS> characters, and no other file manager even does that, including FC/2.

Not true, I'm afraid. InspectA handles FILES.BBS entries, and will add such
entries to files with long names...

 JS>  `C>      The only thing I don't like or would consider a bug would be
 JS> *IF*  `C> you tag (inset key) several different files in the
 JS> directory.  The  `C> LFN no longer is displayed in the lower left
 JS> bottom line, but is  `C> replaced with the amount of K or MB's in
 JS> files that are tagged.  I  `C> wouldn't call that a bug.

 PM>> Yesh, that is a bit irritting, but i can't be called a
 PM>> bug... 

 JS> Hardly a bug, hardly irritating... it would be irritating if it
 JS> _didn't_ do that.  

Well no. Because the display which is switched off when files are tagged can
be very useful, especially in the case of long filenames. But, I'm not sure
how else it could be done, so I certainly don't consider it a bug, just
something that might better be done another way (so that both the number and
size of tagged files is show, but the display of the file under the cursor is
also preserved).

 >>> and FILES.BBS entries, failure to read most self-extracting 
 >>> archives, 

 JS> It reads ZIP, LHZ and ARJ self-extractors, just as it says in the
 JS> docs.   That covers ALL the self-extractors I have here other than
 JS> those that are archieved compression programs themselves, and I
 JS> generally convert them to ZIP format anyway, as EVERYONE that uses
 JS> archives should have zip archive capability.  

If it did acctually do as advertised (ie, read ZIP, LZH and ARJ
self-extractors) I wouldn't have much to complain about. However, in my
experience, it handles only around 50% of such files. A poor record, given its 
claims. FC/2 works _much_ better in this area. Not to mention having the
ability to read RAR slef-extractors as well.

 PM>> If you look at the online help or the documentation,
 PM>> pressing CTRL-A while the cursor is over a self-extracting
 PM>> archive should display the contents of that archive. 99.9%
 PM>> of the time, it fails, complaining that the file is not an
 PM>> archive or it can't read it. This is simply an advertised
 PM>> funtion that does not work even vaguely as it is supposed
 PM>> to. FC/2 

 JS> This is bogus.  It works exactly as advertised 100% of the time here. 
 JS> It works on ZIP ARJ and LHZ self-extracting archives?  Which of those
 JS> self-extracters does it NOT work on?

It is NOT bogus. Nor am I the only one having problems with its inability to
do as advertised. I repeat - on any one of three machines here, not to mention 
a number of others that I have tried it on, it is lucky if it can read 50% of
ZIP self-extractors, let alone anything else.

 JS> Too bad, I would rather see self extracting apps banned, completely
 JS> removed from the archive capabilities of all compression programs,
 JS> used only in the distribution of the archiver itself.  IBM is just
 JS> one of dumb ass developers that is so stupid, it archives an archive
 JS> in a self-extracting archive.  Sometimes I think the entire computing
 JS> world is controlled air-heads.  The internet sure highlights the sad
 JS> state of computing.

There are a number of quite legitimate uses for self-extracting archives. The
only problem is that you need to be able to trust the source. It should
require little thought to see why companies like IBM (who are only one of many 
who distribute things in self-extracting archives) do so. It means that they
can distrubte code in a compreessed bundle _without_ having to worry about
whether the end-user has the necessary extractor, can obtain it if they don't
alredy have it, or knows how to use it. I don't like them, but I can see a
number of reasons why they are attractive to people who have to distrubite
code without losing parts of it.

 JS> My policy is not to register anything unless I like it a lot, and feel
 JS> the developer deserves my payment for his hard work.  I've registered
 JS> some stuff AFTER I no longer used it...  I've never registered
 JS> anything within the time frames given by the author, thats for sure
 JS> (with the exception of 4OS2, which I registered before I ran OS/2)

:( Well, I certainly intend to register only programs which I have some hope
of seeing continue under develpment. I'm tired of spending money (and effort)
on software only to find that ithas ben abandoned by the author.

regards, paul

--- FleetStreet 1.24.1