Associate Files with Programs

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by eva

Yes, exactly. I would have to create a "Action.readme.info" and then set the Tool Type to MultiView, save, double click and it will work fine. The problem is that I don't think I can do that for say, 100 MP3 files...

I think you should start using DOpus Magellan, there you have more options for tasks like that. With it you can assign what program will be used for a file. For example on my last AmiKit Real update now if you make a right click on an image (whatever format) it will give you the option to edit it with Personal Paint.

[Retro1234]

Obviously you dont need DOpus or Amigakit thing
@Retrofan I thought you would be able to answear this, this is basic WB stuff.
DEF ICONS is the answear

[Retrofan]

Well there is always more than just one way. The thing is that I don't like Workbench always hiding files and .info files just to start.

[BigFan]

Icons themselve don't do the trick. The tool Deficons has to be started before. DefIcons requires WB3.5+.
With 3.0/3.1 you only get the standard icons for project, tool, disc, drawer.
The file associaton is actively controlled by DefIcons (snooping the files in the drawer when opened). It is not enough to set up the default tool in a standard icon.

What version of WB are you running, eva?

[Retro1234]

Yes Retro you are right all the .info files in Ram eats memory there must be way to just store them on HD.

ClassicWb probably has Newicons or MagicWB or something that has Def icons.

[BigFan]

Assign Env: to a workbench drawer of choice or redirect to envarc (not recommended) and you free your precious memory.

[eva]

Solved it. It was tricky, needed IconChief and a bunch of other stuff but now I can open a bunch of files by double-clicking! Wrote a mini-tutorial in the first post.

Thank you!

[Retro1234]

Cool ill have to have a look at that

[BigFan]

IconChief can be run from wbstartup, can be configured via tooltypes. Doesn't make sense to me to start a workbench tool from user-startup instead of wbstartup drawer.

Besides, no matter how it is started, IconChief freezes when opening drawers with lots of files, or when reopening a drawer with many files. It is sluggish as well.

I hope it works for you well, though. I'm still looking for a more stable and convinient solution.

[eva]

Originally Posted by BigFan

IconChief can be run from wbstartup, can be configured via tooltypes. Doesn't make sense to me to start a workbench tool from user-startup instead of wbstartup drawer.

It does make lots and lots of sense if you do not want IconChief's icon to appear on the workbench screen.

Originally Posted by BigFan

Besides, no matter how it is started, IconChief freezes when opening drawers with lots of files, or when reopening a drawer with many files. It is sluggish as well.

I have tested IconChief extensively (as the thread implies) with .MP3 files and a bunch of text files. I have not noticed any slowdowns at all. Some extra effort must probably be made to identifiy the files first but I have not noticed anything close to "sluggishness" - and I have a keen eye for it.

Originally Posted by BigFan

I hope it works for you well, though. I'm still looking for a more stable and convinient solution.

As far as I have seen from your previous post, you suggest DefIcons to be the only possibility to achieve the same effect. You also say that DefIcons only runs on OS3.5, and, by your own description, it also runs a tool in the background, which would just lead to the same "sluggishness", if any. This is a OS3.1 solution.

I also do not see what the "stability" term refers to... I have just turned off the Amiga, it ran for 8 hours today without any crashes.

[BigFan]

My network archive contains all amiga software i've downloaded in the past. Around 320 files, mainly archives (lha zip etc). IconChief freezes when opening.

If you would have rtfm, then you would know better about IconChief. It makes NO SENSE because IconChief can be configured via tooltypes.
If you would only take care of that, you would have figured out, that APPICON can be activated/deactivated using tooltype entry.

Sluggish means, it takes a considerably amount of time. More than ten times slower than DefIcons in OS3.9, same processor, same memory, same harddrive. That is creeping slow.

Addition: Meanwhile i was testing "fakedeficon". Based on whatis.library, like IconChief, same slowdown on larger content. No freeze, but it doesn't start a default tool, makes it almost useless. Author wrote about capturing commandline requester, but nothing happens.

So whatis.library is the bummer, that slows down file access.


Just for your info, i'm testing these programs on OS3.1. Not 3.9.
I'm looking for tools to enhance the system without too much overhead. I've 3.9 running as well and i can see and feel the difference. Would be nice to get the most out of it without those dreaded installation procedures, false assignments, wrong default tools, that came with these ancient tools. When everything is running fine, i will make a differential archive. After a fresh install of wb3.1, simple unpacking will finetuning 3.1.

[eva]

Interesting. I have tried 300 text files. It did slow down a little while opening the folder but in like 1-2 seconds it listed the contents. I can check again by mixing in some LHA / ZIPs / MP3s etc...

[eva]

Another test with 523 items, sizes vary from 0 to 10MB and mixed .zip, .txt, mp3, .lha

It takes like 5-10 seconds to actually load the folder. Then again if I select Window->Cleanup it also takes about 5 seconds to clean up the folder. However, no crashes or freezes - actually most of those 5-10 seconds I can see the HDD reading (a CF).

I am also looking for unobtrusive tools but I do not experience any freezes / crashes with IconChief. Then again, your usage may be heavier than mine - I certainly do not keep folders that large.

[eva]

Originally Posted by BigFan

If you would have rtfm, then you would know better about IconChief. It makes NO SENSE because IconChief can be configured via tooltypes.
If you would only take care of that, you would have figured out, that APPICON can be activated/deactivated using tooltype entry.

Hmm. I have just tried this by commenting out the user-startup lines and then running IconChief from Workbench. In my set-up running IconChief from WBStartup or just running IconChief from Workbench does not seem to also make it active and no icons are handled.

[BigFan]

You need to edit the tooltypes. Enclose APPICON=IconChief in brackets.

Look at this screenie from Swazinfo:

[BigFan]

I've been playing with "deficons" from the Newicon3.0 archive this morning.

Jesus, it is way faster than whatis.library.
300 files, no delay, works like a breeze.

Still no handling when double-clicking the pseudo-icon.

Correction: It is NewIcons V4, not 3

[BigFan]

Originally Posted by eva

Then again, your usage may be heavier than mine - I certainly do not keep folders that large.

i'm too lazy to sort them out and move files in subfolders.
it's blazing fast when displayed as text, i used DOpus for file ops before. But DOpus is somehow "flaky".

Another test with 523 items, sizes vary from 0 to 10MB and mixed .zip, .txt, mp3, .lha

hmm. maybe i got file errors or incompatible files there. i wonder why it sometimes read the folder at the first run without problems (except heavy delay) and freezes when reopening.

[eva]

I have ran several tests with this, it is working fine for several days with no slowdowns. What I do remark though, is that the way whatis / IconChief works is that it can detect filetypes by actually opening the file and then matching magic bytes in order to identify the file.

The instructions on the first post use the S:FileTypes from awmwb3 which is a set of rules containing just a few pattern matches. On the other hand, I imagine this could slow down on very large files in case S:FileTypes contains a bunch of rules that scan for bytes inside the file - in the end every file will have to be scanned segment by segment to determine what type of file it is...

I guess that a workaround in case you experience slowdowns would be to change S:FileTypes to only match by file name, so match .readme as text (which it already does) and eliminate the byte scanning rules.

Then again, this is much powerful than what other operating systems offer. Windows and OSX are hell-bent on identifying a file by its named extension rather than scanning the file for magic bytes. You know, the whole mail attachment viruses with a fake extensions...

[BigFan]

Yes, i know about Win file handling. Truely disappointing.

I've been running into more problems with WB3.1
I ditched IconChief for DefIcons (the one from NewIcons release). It stops after inspecting 300 files, leaving the remaining 94 files unidentified, instead standard icon def_tool is used for lha-files, should be def_project.

Switching to "list by names" grabs more then 1 MB of chipmem. No freeing when displaying as icon again. Drawer has to be closed to free memory.

What boggles me is:
i cannot scroll to the last 90 icons without "out of memory" error.
Looks like the same barrier as with icon idenfication. To me it seems that despite i'm using Fblit (which is meant to keep chipmem usage low) those tools limit to 2 MB no matter if chipmem has been promoted to fastmem.

IconChief and FakeIcon are still freezing. I do not know what's going wrong here.

[ruthan]

Then again, this is much powerful than what other operating systems offer. Windows and OSX are hell-bent on identifying a file by its named extension rather than scanning the file for magic bytes. You know, the whole mail attachment viruses with a fake extensions...

I dont think that this is better, open every file for reading, fetch header in memory, check it, close file and flush memory. Is from algorithms point of view really nightmare. + Make for every 1 files, 1 another files is real waste of space.

Regardless thanks for solution, im new user so you make me laugh how big thing this is in year 2015 on Amiga

I only wonder about this:

Now, when you restart, the new icons will show up and you can double-click any file and it will open the program for the corresponding def_#?.info. For instance, awmwb3 uses Unpacker when you double-click a file that ends in the .lha extension. You can change this by going to SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/Sys and selecting Icons->Information... on the def_lha.info and then setting, say WizArc as the Tool Type.

What is best way to do it? You are doing it in Dopus, in In shell, or how? Would be some GUI tool with extension-app mapping better?

Ider i thing tried to do something like that, but i never got it working properly, i only had some prefs wizzard, were i set something, but it never worked.

Other problem is how to add Default tool to type, where this collumn doesnt exists?