In the February 1998 issue of Amazing computing, I covered a few programs for Windows 95 that could prove useful to Amiga owners. One of those programs, Quickview Plus, I mis labeled as Fullview. This, of course, was not a mistake, I was merely testing to see if you were paying attention. Ahem. The corrected material appears below:
Quickview Plus v4.5.0
http://www5.eps.inso.com/
INSO's Quickview Plus is another handy program for Amiga owners who also use PCs. Quickview Plus is a file viewer program, and supports over 200 different file formats. What makes this program of great use to readers of this article is the ability to view and unpack LHA archives. This is handy if you need to view or extract a file without moving the archive to the Amiga. While there is a DOS based version of LHA, it doesn't support the Amiga's long filenames. Quickview Plus not only supports long filenames, it has a nice GUI for dealing with archives. You can download a trial version from their web site. You'll find this a lot easier now that you have the actual real name! (Sigh)
Name: Zip.lha
Short: Zip v2.2 .ZIP archive creator
Author: Bunch of people (see documentation)
Type: util/arc/
While we're on the topic of archives and PCs, Zip archives are ubiquitous in the PC universe, although not much used here on Planet Amiga. Still, it is can be useful to handle Zip archives.
These two programs enable you to view, unpack and create Zip archives
compatible with PKZip 2.04g, which should be most Zip files available
today. While these have no GUI, they are relatively straightforward, and of
course, there are many GUI front ends for zip, lha, lzx and other archives, one such (small but useful) being:
Name: unpacker21.lha
Short: Easily extract/view/test archives via WB or Shell!
Author: [email protected] (Ralph Torchia)
Type: util/arc
Requires: Requires AmigaOS 2.x+ and external archive programs
This is a no muss no fuss program which can unpack LHA, LZX, ZIP, DMS and other types of archives. You can run it either from the Workbench or shell, and it pops up a file requester for the archive and destination. The configuration file can be edited to add new types of archives.
This looks like a good place to revisit XPK, which I covered in the September 1996 issue of Amazing Computing. Since that article, XPK development has been passed on to a new author, who has released several updates.
Name: XPK_User.lha
Short: V4.16 Compression package, user edition
Author: Dirk Stoecker, Christian von Roques, Urban Dominik Mueller, ...
Type: util/pack
www: http://www.amigaworld.com/support/xpkmaster/
or http://rcswww.urz.tu-dresden.de/~stoecker/xpkmaster.html
Status: FREEWARE
XPK is a standard interface which allows access to multiple compression formats. A programmer can support XPK, and allow users to pick any of dozens of XPK compression methods without having to code each method himself. This makes for easier programming, and more options for the user. The XPK system also features the ability to compress programs and de-compress and run them transparently. This is a great boon if your hard drive is feeling cramped, though XPK compressed programs launch a little slower and use a bit more ram to get started.
Dirk Stoecker has continued work on this venerable and powerful system. Dirk has made many improvements, including several ease of use features. Perhaps the most visible and useful change for the user is the addition of a preferences system. This allows the user to specify such things as default packers, and compression ratios. It is also possible to add filters for files which should not be compressed via XPK, such as ZIP, LZX and LHA archives, and GIF, JPEG and PNG pictures, all of which, being compressed already, would not compress well or at all using XPK. See Figure 1 for the XPK preferences program.
Figure 1:The new XPK Preferences
More and more programs are supporting XPK lately, including commercial programs like Diavolo, a hard drive backup program. If you have any interest at all on saving disk space, I recommend XPK highly.
Like Windows Drivespace, XFH is an on the fly device compressor, using the XPK system. XFH can compress specified directories or entire hard drive partitions. Once compressed, all the files on the compressed drive are automatically decompressed as needed. Except for a bit of extra time and memory, you won't even know the files are compressed.
The beauty of XFH is, your program doesn't even need to understand or be written with XPK in mind, it's all handled at the system level. And with the new XPK preferences system implemented now, XFH is even more handy than ever.
Name: XpkCybPrefs.lha
Short: V1.3: "The" xpkUSER ultimate implementation !!!
Author: Alexis "Cyb" Nasr, David "Reez" Le Corfec
Type: util/pack
Requires: OS2.04+, xpkmaster.library v4.15+ (included), datamaster.library (included),
MUI 3.3+
Status: GIFTWARE/FREEWARE
With the new versions by Dirk Stoecker, XPK gained the USER packing method. This is not a compression sub-library, but simply tells XPK to use the external preferences system. XpkCybPrefs takes advantage of this ability to create a very flexible system which makes the XPK compression system even more powerful.
Using XPKCybPrefs, the user can specify compression methods based on filetypes. For instance, music MODs could be compressed using one method, executable programs using another, and archives and compressed picture formats like PNG would not be compressed at all.
XPK is compatible with XFH, so you can compress entire partitions and have all the files on them optimally compressed. See Figure 2 for the interface.
