MAVLIB - Howto MAVLIB can manipulate 2 filesystems: - a library file organized as a complete filesystem with directories and subdirectories, any count of levels in the hierarchy, and files of any type. - the base OS's filesystem. Basically the DOS filesystem. MAVLIB functions by selecting operations in menu windows and by "drag/drop" operations. It not uses a mouse but UP/DOWN keys. And for all operations the ESC key is ALLWAYS used to exit the state in use. MAVLIB displays the operations in dropdown menus. The dropdown menus appear when the filesystem selected has changed. And to change the filesystem is just to select the corresponding dropmenu by TAB hits. Operations to be selected appear also in a grey status bar at the bottom of the display. When selecting a filesystem or batch operations, the corresponding filesystem shall be displayed in the main window. Some operations can be executed on a batch of files. This batch is created from selected files of the DOS filesystem. The file can (actually) be deleted at once. This to say that deleting a DOS file can not be done directly. The files must be selected by navigation in the filesystem and inserting them in the batch by INS key hits. Than in the command mode, selecting the "BATCH Menu" the possible operations can be selected. They perform the same operation on all files of the batch at once. So when DELETE is selected the files shall be REALLY removed. So if the selected files need to be modified, they can be changed. At least exiting the program shall not perform any task on the files! LIBRARIES A library file is a single file as seen by the operating system, but it can contains a quasi unlimited count of separate "objects", files or directories. The limit is 4 billions of files and 4 billions of characters in the whole library. In the library filesystem, MAVLIB can create a new library, create entries for files, create directories, extract files, delete them, ... and navigate in the hierarchy. Selecting a file you can delete it or add other parts to. Selecting a directory and hitting RETURN, the program shall enter this directory and display it. Any directory has "." and ".." as local subdirectories. Like in other filesystems, "." is the actual level and hitting it the display of this level is shown again. (what normally is not visible because the display is normally not modified). ".." is the upward level. In fact returning to the directory before the actual was selected. Many kind of files can be stored in the library as in any operating system. Some files shall use special technics like compression or encrypted files. The libraries are blocks oriented but unlike filesystems, a file has no "clusters" and a block is only 128 bytes. To say that the minimal size of a file is 128 bytes and not like in DOS "clusters" of 2, 4, 8 Kb or more. A library can store "objects". These are the same as an OS can. But MAVLIB can also contains more sophisticate objects ... like a whole library stored as ONE single file! It can also contains archive files. Also a single file containing many others, mostly compressed. And having the particularity the decompressor program to be included. Plus some executable file automatically launched when decompressing the file. REMARKS: a library can be added into another. But this can be done like a normal file inserted IN the libray. But it can also be a link to an external library file. For some other programs its also a very different object because for example Trakian programs can link files on other disks or on systems to be connected by a network or by modem calls. When a library is included or attached, it can be used like a normal library and permits similar operations but limited to the one selected. The library manager MAVLIB is so much powerfull than "just a lib". It has so the same possibilities as programs like WINZIP running on windows systems. But having also more complex operations. Like for example to execute automatically batch code or executable code when selecting some "entries", else to manipulate some files or part of files, else just executing the batch. DOS FILESYSTEM MAVLIB can run on any system commonly used for PC computers. The functioning is the same as the libraries, with directories, subdirectories, ... Operations are limited to those needed and comparable to the OS's operations. In this mode MAVLIB can create a batch of files on which a single operations can later be done. For example you can delete files. In this case when navigating in the OS's filesystem, and hitting DEL or Delete on a particular file, this one shall be inserted in a batch of files and nothing else shall be done. But later, hitting "F10", the batch's contain can be displayed. And when this is in effect, firing an operation, this operations shall be executed on the whole batch. So for example doing a "delete", all the files shown in the batch shall be really deleted in one operation. Other operations shall be available later or for special versions. For example to create archive self-extracting files, send by modems files, attach them to emails, compression, encrypting and the reverse, .... The DOS operations are sometime used to exchange files between the 2 filesystems. For example to add a file to a library needs to create in the library file an "entry", selecting it in the library filesystem and than switching to the DOS filesystem, selected files can be inserted in the libray at the entry selected at this moment. BATCH FILES The files in the batch can appear on the display when the corresponding menu has been selected. All operations are performed on the whole batch, all files of. It is not possible to execute different operations on different files else those for editing the batch. The Rev 2.0 can only delete the selected files. The files can be selected by INS key when navigating in the DOS filesystem. Files can be selected anywhere in any directory of the DOS filesystem. They shall appear in the batch with their full path and name. And the file on which the operation shall be performed is the file with this path, not any other having the same name but a different directory. Later other operations shall be possible, like to encrypt or compress the selected files and create an archive file of the selected files. For Trakian programs, the batch shall also be used for attachments to Emails and other uses. A full WEB page is composed of many different files, main page, frames, graphic, audio, ... All are normally separate files loaded by the browser from their respective URL, sometime from different servers, most time from several directories on the same server. The browser Charlie and Trakian can work in local, not connected to any communication channel. To display "contents" in out of line mode need to have ALL files of the same content (a WEB page, an Email, ....) at disposal on the local system. For this kind of operations, Charlie-Trakian shall use directories of a library file. And to create this kind of complete content the batch operation shall be used.