BSC-It beta 2 report

[brian.hammack@rook.wa.com (Brian Hammack)]

 Peter spewed forth:

 PFH<| How fast is this compared to sscii?

It's faster than Binscii 1.0.3, haven't gone head-to-head on GSCII+, and
neither Tom nor myself have held a stopwatch to the programs.  Received
beta-2 today (improved user interface, not perfect yet).  Coming soon if
all goes well will be the ability to set what kind of encoding one
wants:  binscii [default], uuencoding, or base64.  Decoding I suppose
will be automatic by the program looking at the file.  Latest feature is
the ability to select how many sections the encode should be in and the
incorporation of linefeeds (Apple vs Unix), and the browser/selector is
darn slick.  Here, read the docs as they currently stand:
- - -
 BscIt v1.0 - prerelease beta notes
____________________________________

The binscii routines in this program are based on BinSCII v1.0.3,
written and copyrighted by David Whitney in 1989.

 1. Introduction
    The only drawback to BinSCII has been the spartan user interface.
I've been known to write a few of those myself, so when I wrote a
more user friendly interface for another program of mine, I thought
that it would make a nice front end.

 2. How it works
    The default mode is decode, so I'll discuss this first.

    A. Decode
       This is pretty easy, select the file(s) with the browser and it
will decode them into the chosen directory. Note that when launching
icons from the Finder only one file can be processed at a time and the
program will end when it is finished. Press "D" to switch to Decode
if you have used Encode.

    B. Encode
       Press "E" to switch to Encode. Select the file(s) to encode with
the browser. You can set the encode options by pressing "O"; this lets
you choose between Apple or Unix line termination, and how many binscii
segments to include per file. The default is Apple mode and one segment
per file.  [MushNote:  I've suggested changing this to segment *size*
(4k, 8k, 16k, 32k) instead of # of segments, which presently is 1-3.]

 3. The browser
    The browse-king mini-browser represents the state of the art in
mini-browsers in the prodos 8 environment. Um, yeah. Anyway, functions
are mostly patterned after the gs/os open file dialog.  Here are the
commands this time around.

    - Up and Down move up and down the list of files.
    - Left moves back one directory level.
    - Space allows you to mark multiple files.
    - Tab lets you select from a list of online volumes.
    - Cmd+Left|Right switches to the previous|next online volume.
    - Return and Right select a directory or file.
    - V toggles display of work-in-progress stats.
    - O allows you to set the encode options.
    - D sets Decode mode.
    - E sets Encode mode.
    - Esc exits the program.
- - -
Once again, any questions on the program, email *me* for info.  It's
not ready for the public yet; the destination path is not "taking" just
yet and Tom's got to add other coding schemes beside binscii.

                                                        << mushroom >>

 * 2qwk! 2.03 * PRODIGY:  Actually an illigitimate son.
--                                                                   -- 
yet another annoying post by brian.hammack@rook.wa.com -- deal with it.