The Norton Commander Archive Viewer -
V4.1 (OFFICIAL RELEASE), a small
utility to manipulate ARC, ARJ, LZH,
PAK, ZIP and ZOO files, lots of
options, very easy to use, can also be
used as stand-alone util, The Norton
Commander is not needed, USE IT!
Copyright (C) 1993 Chris Buijs.

AVIEW V4.1


Copyright (C) 1992-93 by Chris Buijs



AVIEW is an archive-viewer/manipulator utility for the Norton Commander,
it views ARC, ARJ, LZH, PAK, ZIP and ZOO archives automatically, it shows
lots of info about the files in the archive, you can also tag files and
unpack them, all operations also work on archive-in-archive (up to 16
levels deep).


AVIEW is made for usage under the Norton Commander, however, the Norton
Commander is NOT needed to use AVIEW, AVIEW can also be used stand-alone,
it contains a full featured file-selector.


This utility is here-by placed in Public Domain and can be concidered
freeware, this utility may not be sold, hired, leased or modified, it may
be freely copied as a complete package.


This documentation is a quick-help to setup AVIEW, for more information
you can study the AVIEW.CTL and WHATSNEW.nn files.


To print this documentation, type on the DOS-Prompt:

COPY AVIEW.DOC LPT1:

followed by an ENTER, change 'LPT1:' to the device you want to use to
print.


Requirements


AVIEW requires: - MS/PCDOS V3.3x or higher (V5.0 or higher recommended).
- 375 KB of free conventional memory (570 KB when running
under Norton Commander V4.0).
- A (microsoft compatible) mouse (optional).

The following programms may be needed (optional):

For archive adding, extracting, updating and converting:

ARJ.EXE from Robert K. Jung.
LHA.EXE from Haruyasu Yoshizaki.
PAK.EXE from NoGate Consulting.
PKUNPAK and PKPAK from PKWare.
PKUNZIP.EXE and PKZIP.EXE from PKWare.
ZOO.EXE from Rahul Dhesi.


For file-viewing/editing:

WPVIEW.EXE from Symantec (Peter Norton Computing).
NCEDIT.EXE from Symantec (Peter Norotn Computing).


All the above programms are optional and can be replaced by others, this
can be done by changing the parameters in the AVIEW.CTL file, see the
sample AVIEW.CTL for more information.


Parameters


Syntax: AVIEW [[:][\][]] [/?] [/M] [/25]
[/35] [/40] [/43] [/50]

- Drive where archive is on.

- Path where archive is stored.

- Archive-file.

/? - Gives a help-screen about the parameters.

/M - Starts up AVIEW in monochrome mode.

/25 - Starts up AVIEW in 25 lines per screen mode.

/35 - Starts up AVIEW in 35 lines per screen mode (EGA).

/40 - Starts up AVIEW in 40 lines per screen mode (EGA)

/43 - Starts up AVIEW in 43 lines per screen mode (VGA)

/50 - Starts up AVIEW in 50 lines per screen mode (VGA)


When no drive/path/file parameters are given, AVIEW will startup with a
file-selector, with this file-selector you can select a file to view.
With the file-selector you can also switch between drives, directorys
and files.

When only a drive or path is given as parameter, aview will startup the
file-selector in the given drive/directory.

AVIEW automatically detects how many lines per screen are used at startup
and will use the number of lines per screen detected, this can be
overridden with one of the above parameters or with the SCREENMODE
parameter in the AVIEW.CTL file.


Installation


STANDALONE

- Copy AVIEW.EXE and AVIEW.CTL to a directory in your PATH, AVIEW.CTL must
be located in the same directory as AVIEW.EXE.
- Edit the AVIEW.CTL file with a plain ascii-editor and change the
parameters so that AVIEW will work correctly on your system.
- Your now ready to run AVIEW.



THE NORTON COMMANDER Versions prior to V4.0

- Copy AVIEW.EXE, AVIEW.CTL and AVIEWNC.EXE to the directory where
the Norton Commander is installed.
- Run the AVIEWNC utility, this utility will update your NC.EXT file.
- Delete AVIEWNC.EXE, only needed for installing AVIEW in the NC.EXT file.
- Edit the AVIEW.CTL file with a plain ascii-editor and change the
parameters so that AVIEW will work correctly on your.
- Restart The Norton Commander.
- Your now ready to run AVIEW.

NOTE: After installing AVIEW in The Norton Commander, you can view an
archive by pressing ENTER or F3.



THE NORTON COMMANDER V4.0

- Copy AVIEW.EXE, AVIEW.CTL and AVIEWNC4.EXE to the directory where
the Norton Commander is installed.
- Run the AVIEWNC4 utility, this utility will update your NC.CFG and
NC.EXT files.
- Delete AVIEWNC4.EXE, only needed for installing AVIEW in the NC.CFG and
NC.EXT files.
- Edit the AVIEW.CTL file with a plain ascii-editor and change the
parameters so that AVIEW will work correctly on your system.
- Restart The Norton Commander.
- Your now ready to run AVIEW.

NOTE: When you run AVIEW under The Norton Commander V4.0, you can only
use AVIEW on a file by pressing F3, when you press ENTER in
NC V4.0, the internal file-view will be activated, this CANNOT
be changed to use AVIEW instead.

NOTE 2: I discovered that when you use F3 under the Norton Commander V4.0
that NC V4.0 doesn't swap itself out of memory, this can give
problems/errors executing some external utilitys, Symantec is
currently working on a fix for this.


AVIEW.CTL


For customizing the operations of AVIEW, you can edit the AVIEW.CTL
control file, its a plain ascii-file, see the example AVIEW.CTL for more
information, the following commands can be used in the control file to
configure AVIEW:


ALTERNATELAYOUT

With this command you tell AVIEW to use the alternate list-layout of the
archive-lister, the alternate list-layout includes lesser information
but shows the full-paths of the files in the archive.


DATEFORMAT

With this command you can define the file-date-format, use MM for month,
DD for day and YY for year, sepparation-chars can be freely used,
default is MM/DD/YY, maximum length is 8 chars.


NOCOLOR

With this command you force AVIEW in black and white mode, this can be
handy for laptop-users with LCD-Screens.


NOMOUSE

When you have a mouse, and it is detected by AVIEW, you can force AVIEW
with this command to ignore the mouse and not use it.


VIEWER []

With this command you can define up to 20 viewers to use to view files from
an archive, is a file-extension which triggers to view
a file, must not be more then 3 chars and may include wildcards,
DON'T include the period (.) in the trigger-extension. When no viewers are
defined, WPVIEW is taken for all type of files.


EDITOR []

With this command you can define up to 20 editors to use to edit files from
an archive, is a file-extension which triggers to edit
a file, must not be more then 3 chars and may include wildcards,
DON'T include the period (.) in the trigger-extension. When no editors are
defined, NCEDIT is taken for all type of files.


EXTRACTPATH

The path to use for extracting files to, when this path isn't defined,
AVIEW will prompt for a path before extracting any files.


SCREENMODE

With this statement you can define how many lines per screen AVIEW must
use, valid numbers are 25, 35, 40, 43 and 50, note that you will need an
EGA or VGA adaptor when you use numbers greater than 25.

SORT [Ascending|Descending]

With this parameter you define how to sort the file-list as default, there
are 6 sort-keys:

NAME - For sorting on file-name
EXTENSION - For sorting on file-extension.
ORGSIZE - For sorting on original (uncompressed) file-size.
CMPSIZE - For sorting on compressed file-size.
RATIO - For sorting on ratio.
DATETIME - For sorting on date and time.
METHOD - For sorting on compression-method.
UNSORTED - For no sorting (Unsorted).

Optional you can also define the sort-direction, default is ascending:

ASCENDING - Sort ascending.
DESCENDING - Sort descending.

The default sorting is on filename, ascending.


TEMPPATH

With this command you define the path AVIEW must use as work-directory,
this can be a ram-drive which will speed-up AVIEW dramatically, in this
directory AVIEW will creates its own tempory directorys, these tempory
directorys will be deleted when AVIEW doesn't need them anymore, note
that the directory specified with TEMPPATH is NOT deleted, nor the
files that exist in it, this has been changed since V3.0.


SCANNER [\] []

With this command you can define the virus-scanner to use for scanning the
file(s) unpacked with the unpack function, when no virus-scanner is
defined, NO scan will be performed.


ZOOMSPEED

With this command you can define the zoom-speed of the popup-windows that
build up onto the screen, 0 will give an immidiate popup, the default
zoomspeed is 10.


With the following commands you can define the parameters used by AVIEW
for using the external archive-utilitys.
For normal operation of AVIEW, you don't need to change this, all the
following commands are optional, the sample commands in the sample
AVIEW.CTL file reflects the standard default configuration of AVIEW.



xxxADD
xxxDELETE
xxxEXTRACT
xxxUNPACK
xxxUPDATE
xxxRESPONSE

With these commands you can configure the interface between AVIEW and the
external archive-utilitys, the xxx can be ARC, ARJ, LHA, PAK, ZIP or ZOO.
xxxADD - Defines which parameters to use for adding a file to
an archive, this is used for the ADD function (F7), and for
creating new archives with the CONVERT function (F5).
xxxDELETE - Defines which parameters to use for deleting a file or files
from an archive, this is used for the DELETE function
(F8 or DEL).
xxxEXTRACT - Defines which parameters to use for extracting a file or files
from an archive, this is used for the extract-function.
xxxUNPACK - Defines which parameters to use for extracting ONE file from
an archive WITHOUT path, this is used internally in AVIEW.
xxxUPDATE - Defines which parameters to use for updating a file in an
archive, this is used after you edited a file from an archive.
xxxRESPONSE - Defines which charachter to use before a file name to tell
the archiver that it is a response file, AVIEW defines
automatically when to use this or not.


NOTE: There are two variables, %A and %F, these two must ALWAYS exist in
the above parameters (except xxxRESPONSE), %A will be replaced by
AVIEW with the name of the archive processed, and %F with a filename
for adding/deleting/updating, note that AVIEW will automatically add
the response-file-char before the filename when needed.
The variables %A and %F are NOT optional!


Operation


SWAPPING:

When executing an external utility, AVIEW will first try to swap itself out
of memory, AVIEW will firstly try to swap to expanded memory (EMS), when
not succesfull, AVIEW will try to swap to extendend memory (XMS), and when
that's not succesfull, AVIEW will try to swap itself to disk.
AVIEW will need 375 KB free EMS, XMS or DISK-Space to swap, when not, AVIEW
will NOT execute the external utility and aborts with an error.



MOUSE:

AVIEW has mouse-support, when a mouse is detected it will be used
automatically, the mouse is used in file-lists, menu's and the
file-selector.

Click once on an entry to highlight it, click it twice for selecting it.

Clicking at the top or bottom of a menu, or at the top or bottom of a
file-list will scroll the cursor-bar.

The function-keys at the bottom of the screen can offcourse also be clicked.

The (most) right mouse-button will act as an (de)selection key, point to
a file and click with the (most) right mouse-button to (de)select it.

Archive-Viewing Keys:

F1 - Help, some info which keys you can use.

F2 - Unpack, extracts file under selection-bar or all tagged
files from archive.

F3 or ENTER - View file, also for archive-in-archive (up to 16 levels
deep).

F4 - Edit file, after editing AVIEW will update the archive,
AVIEW will only update when the edited file has been changed.

F5 - Convert, you can convert the archive you are viewing to
another archive-format.

F6 or ALT-S - Sort, sort file list.

F7 - Add, add files to archive, when on the input-field, press
F2 to activate the file-selector.

F8 or DEL - Delete, Delete file under selection-bar or all tagged files
from archive.

F9 or ALT-J - jump to DOS.

F10 or ESC - Step back one archive when nested-viewing is used, or exit.

SHIFT-F2 - Same as F2 only now you can enter an extraction-path.

SHIFT-F7 - Create a new file and add it to the archive, can be handy
for (example) creating FILE_ID.DIZ files.

SHIFT-F9 - Print file under cursor-bar.

CTRL-F1 - Toggle between Ascending/Descending sorting.

CTRL-F2 - Same as F2 only now the current directory is taken as
extraction path.

CTRL-F3 - Sort list on filename.

CTRL-F4 - Sort list on extension.

CTRL-F5 - Sort list on original size.

CTRL-F6 - Sort list on compressed size.

CTRL-F7 - Sort list on ratio.

CTRL-F8 - Sort list on date/time.

CTRL-F9 - Sort list on method.

CTRL-F10 - Do not sort list (Unsorted).

ALT-F3 - View file, same as F3, only now you can select a viewer to
use from the viewers list.

ALT-F4 - Edit file, same as F4, only now you can select a editor to
use from the editors list.

ALT-F9 - Switch between EGA/VGA line mode (43 or 50) and 25 line mode.

ALT-L - Toggle between standard and alternate file-list-layout.

INS or SPACE - Tag/Untag files.

Gray + - Wildcard selection.

Gray - - Wildcard de-selection.

Gray * - Revert selection.

File-Selector Keys:

F1 - Help, some info which keys you can use.

F2 - Change drive/directory.

F3 or ENTER - Select a drive/directory or file to view.

F6 - Rename directory/file.

F7 - Create directory.

F8 or DEL - Delete directorys/files.

F9 or ALT-J - jump to DOS.

F10 or ESC - Quit.

INS or SPACE - Tag/Untag files.

Gray + - Wildcard selection.

Gray - - Wildcard de-selection.

Gray * - Revert selection.


Contact/Support


For bug-reports, suggestions and other things concerning AVIEW you can
contact me at the following BBS:

Action Board Zaandam
+31-(0)75-704890
1200, 2400 and 9600 HST V42/V42Bis.
Located in The Netherlands
24 Hours a day reachable.

Just try to yell the sysop or write a message to me.

I can also can be reached on COMPUSERVE under 100117,3242 (Chris Buijs).
COMPUSERVE can also be called for the latest version of AVIEW, it can
be found in the IBMSYS forum in library 6 (File Utilitys).

If you like AVIEW, and you are using it on a regular basis, you can send
me a postcard saying so, my address is:

Chris Buijs
De Spil 22
1507 CX Zaandam
The Netherlands


Have Fun,
Chris Buijs