💾 Archived View for mirrors.apple2.org.za › archive › apple.cabi.net › Utilities › SPRE.BXY.TXT captured on 2024-02-05 at 11:45:35.

View Raw

More Information

⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Spre (Simple Profile Editor) v1.0 ReadMe
By Andy McFadden
Revised: 26-Sep-93


NOTE: This editor may be distributed freely so long as the UNMODIFIED program and
documentation appear in the same archive.  HardPressed� itself is a commercial
product that may NOT be distributed.

This version of Spre (v1.0) is not an official product of WestCode Software, Inc.
 All questions, comments, suggestions, and requests for help should go directly
to the author, NOT WestCode.


INTRODUCTION

Spre is a very simple editor for HardPressed� compression profiles.  It allows
you to change the modules assigned to the different file categories, so that you
can create your own profiles instead of being limited to the standard ones that
ship with HP.


HOW PROFILES WORK

Compression profiles have four parts:

	(1) header
	(2) division of file types into categories
	(3) assignment of certain suffixes into categories
	(4) assignment of compression modules to categories

Part 1 contains some information about the profile, including the name used in
the CDev's profile selection pop-up menu.

Part 2 divides files into one of several different categories.  Each category
represents a different kind of data (text, graphics, applications, etc), and may
be compressed in a different way.

Part 3 allows files to be divided into categories by name, regardless of
filetype.  This allows things like "Archive.SHK" to be treated as a ShrinkIt
archive whether or not the filetype is set correctly.

Part 4 determines the compression modules used to compress each category.  Spre
was designed primarily to edit this section.  It can't change parts 2 and 3, but
it will allow you to edit the name used in the CDev's pop-up menu.


HOW TO USE SPRE

Spre recognizes two kinds of profiles: the "Standard" kind and the "All" kind. 
Standard profiles have 20 categories, with the files distributed among them. 
Examples of Standard profiles are "Standard", "Faster, less compression", and
"Slower, more compression".

The All profiles have only one category.  Every file is compressed according to
the modules selected for it.  Several of these are shipped with HP, one for each
compression module.


To edit a profile, either load an existing one (by selecting the "Open" menu
item), or create a new one (with the "New (Std)" or "New (All)" menu items).  A
new Standard profile matches the "Standard" profile included with HardPressed.

The current category is selected with the pop-up menu at the top of the window. 
The modules currently chosen for that category appear in the top list, and the
modules available for use appear in the bottom.

When you double-click on a module in the top window, it is removed from the
category, and its entry in the lower window will undim.

When you double-click on a module in the bottom window, it is added to the
current category, and its entry in the lower window will dim.  All related
modules will also dim, because you can only use each module once per category. 
For example, you can't use both "LZW" and "Faster LZW" in the same category.

When it's time to compress a file, HardPressed will execute the modules in order
from top to bottom.  So if the top window contains:

	Differential
	RLE
	Faster LZW

HardPressed will first run the file through a differential pass, then do RLE on
it, then do Faster LZW.  If one of the modules is inactive or not loaded when the
compression occurs, it will simply be ignored.  (If none of the modules is
present, HardPressed won't bother trying to compress the file.)

Spre looks in the "System:System.Setup:HP.Modules" folder of the boot volume for
modules.  If the modules are located somewhere else (as may be the case in an
AppleShare environment), they won't be found.

NOTE: if the profile references a module that doesn't exist on the current
system, it will appear as "(unknown module)" in that category.  If you delete it,
there is no way to put it back.  This is not the best strategy for dealing with
them, but it does allow you to remove modules from your profiles that no longer
exist on your system.

Modules are always added at the bottom of the current list.


When you have finished altering the profile, save it like you would any other
kind of document.  HardPressed only looks in the "HP.Modules" folder for
profiles, so you should save it there.

To test your new profile, select it from the CDev's profile pop-up menu.  If the
profile was already selected, choose a different one, then choose it again
(HardPressed won't re-load the profile if it thinks it already has a recent copy
of it in memory).


MODULE INFO

Selecting "Module Info" from the "Modules" menu will bring up a
window showing the modules found in the current system.  The display
shows the module's index number, version number, and name.

At the far right, the "Active" column indicates whether or not the
module was active ON DISK when Spre was started (i.e. the "Inactive"
box in the Finder's Icon Info window was not checked).  It does not
indicate whether or not the module is currently loaded by
HardPressed.


FASCINATING FACTS

Spre exists independently of HardPressed.  It will work equally well
whether HardPressed is running or not.  There is no interaction
between the two.  However, Spre does require that the "HP.Modules"
folder exist on the boot volume in the usual location
(*:System:System.Setup:HP.Modules).

You will discover that you can't edit the "Standard" profile.  This
is because the Standard profile is built into the HardPressed INIT,
and can't be modified.  It was done this way to provide a default
profile, so that a system without any profiles on disk would be
useful.

Spre is intended to fill a gap, namely the inability to create and
edit profiles.  It is not intended to be the end-all of profile
editors.  I would prefer that somebody else write that, so that I
can spend time working on stuff like more and better compression
modules.

Side note: it isn't necessary to divide filetypes into categories
and then assign compression modules to them.  It's possible to use
an alternative scheme where each category represents a particular
kind of compression, and then the various filetypes can be assigned
to the categories according to how they should be compressed.  Spre
doesn't support this kind of editing, but I thought I'd mention it
as a hint to any potential profile editor authors out there.


THINGS A �REAL� PROFILE EDITOR WOULD HAVE

I don't plan to add these, but if you're in the mood to write a
profile editor, it should have:

�  The ability to add, delete, or change the file types assigned to
each category.  The "FType.Apple" file is useful here.

�  The ability to edit the table of recognized filename suffixes.

�  The ability to edit more than one profile at a time, with cut and
paste between them.

�  Nicer support for modules, so that clicking on a module in the
�Module Info� window would bring up a dialog with the �blurb�
description for that module.

�  A dialog that allows the user to locate where the modules are.

�  Better handling of references to modules that don't exist.

�  A better user interface.


FILE CATEGORIES

00  Unknown/unassigned
	$00 (NON)	$0d (???)	$0e (???)
	$17 (???)	$18 (???)	$1c (???)
	$1d (???)	$1e (???)	$1f (???)
	$23-28 (???)	$2f-3f (???)	$44-4f (???)
	$53 (???)	$60-6a (???)	$6c (???)
	$70-9f (???)	$a1-aa (???)	$ae-af (???)
	$be (???)	$c4 (???)	$cb-d4 (???)
	$d9 (???)	$da (???)	$dc (???)
	$dd (???)	$de (???)	$df (???)
	$e1 (???)	$e3-ed (???)
	$f1 (???) User #1		$f2 (???) User #2
	$f3 (???) User #3		$f4 (???) User #4
	$f5 (???) User #5		$f6 (???) User #6
	$f7 (???) User #7		$f8 (???) User #8
01  Pascal, CP/M, Apple ///
	$02 (PCD)	$03 (PTX)	$05 (PDA)
	$07 (FNT)	$09 (BA3)	$0a (DA3)
	$0b (WPF)	$0c (SOS)	$10 (RPD)
	$11 (RPI)	$12 (AFD)	$13 (AFM)
	$14 (AFR)	$15 (SCL)	$20 (TDM)
	$21 (???) (Instant Pascal source)
	$22 (???) (UCSD Pascal volume)
	$29 (???) (Apple /// SOS dictionary)
	$ef (PAS)
02  ProDOS 8
	$08 (FOT)	$16 (PFS)	$19 (ADB)
	$1a (AWP)	$1b (ASP)	$2a (8SC)
	$2b (8OB)	$2c (8IC)	$2d (8LD)
	$2e (P8C)	$41 (???) OCR data
	$43 (???) (Peripheral data)
	$5f (FIN)	$6b (BIO)	$6d (TDR)
	$6e (PRE)	$6f (HDV)	$a0 (WP )
	$db (DBM)	$ee (R16)	$f0 (CMD)
	$fa (INT)	$fb (IVR)	$fc (BAS)
	$fd (VAR)	$fe (REL)	$ff (SYS)
03  Generic text
	$04 (TXT)
04  Generic binary
	$06 (BIN)
05  GS/OS Application
	$b1 (OBJ)	$b2 (LIB)	$b3 (S16)
	$b4 (RTL)	$b5 (EXE)	$bc (LDF)
06  Source code
	$b0 (SRC)
07  Development utility doc
	$5e (DVU)
08  Mostly text (WP) files
	$50 (GWP)
09  Mixed text/data
	$40 (DIC)	$51 (GSS)	$52 (GDB)
	$bf (DOC)
10  Desktop Publishing
	$54 (GDP)
11  Hypermedia/multimedia
	$55 (HMD)	$5c (MUM)
12  Sound files
	$d6 (INS)	$d8 (SND)
	filename.SND
13  Compressed data
	$c0/$0004-ffff (PNT)	
	$e0 (LBR)           
	filename.ARC
	filename.Z		   
	filename.ZOO		filename.ZIP
	filename.GIF		filename.JPG
	filename.SHK		filename.SEA
	filename.BXY
14  GS/OS System data
	$42 (FTD)	$ca (ICN)
15  Inits, DAs, Fonts, Tools, etc
	$b6 (PIF)	$b7 (TIF)	$b8 (NDA)
	$b9 (CDA)	$ba (TOL)	$bb (DVR)
	$bd (FST)	$c7 (CDV)	$c8 (FON)
	$f9 (OS )
16  Uncompressed graphic data
	$5b (ANM)	$c1 (PIC)	$c2 (ANI)
	$c3 (PAL)	$c5 (OOG)
17  Mildly compressed graphics
	$c0/$0000-$0003 (PNT)
18  Miscellaneous
	$56 (EDU)	$57 (STN)	$58 (HLP)
	$59 (COM)	$5a (CFG)	$5d (ENT)
	$ab (GSB)	$ac (TDF)	$ad (BDF)
	$c6 (SCR)	$d5 (MUS)	$d7 (MDI)
	$e2 (ATK)
19  Sparse
	$5f/$8001 (YMM)

Special (cannot be compressed, ever):
	$01 (BAD - bad blocks file)
	$0f (DIR - directory)
	$5a/804b, $5a/804c, $5a/804d (HP preferences files)
	$bc/400f, $bc/c00f (HP compression module)
	$c9 (FND - Finder data file)
	$e0/800d, $e0/800e, $e0/800f (HP compressed data file)

Side note: the ".SEA" suffix is part of Standard profiles created by Spre, but is
not included in the standard HP v1.0 modules (an oversight on my part).


PRODUCT INFORMATION

I can be reached at:

	Internet:	fadden@uts.amdahl.com
	GEnie:		FADDEN
	SnailMail:	1822 Amelia Way #8
			    Santa Clara, CA  95050