XTC - A clone of the DOS file manager XTree Gold Version 0.1.9, August 15 1999 What is XTC? ------------ XTC is a UNIX-based clone of the popular XTree Gold file manager for DOS. It is currently in development and contains only file and directory manipulation features. Eventually, many if not all of the features of the original will be included, including: - File viewer - Text editor - Hex editor - Archive manipulation - Command-line window - On-line help. It also supports UNIX-specific features such as long filenames, symbolic links and file permissions. There are a few DOS-specific features of the original such as drive logging and undeletion that may not be included. The program is currently being developed under Linux, but it will eventually support other UNIX variants. XTC is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). See the file COPYING for details. Obtaining the latest version of XTC ----------------------------------- The latest version is available from ftp://ftp.area51.org.au/pub/xtc The main website for XTC is at http://www.area51.org.au/xtc WARNING ------- There is no warranty of any kind associated with this program. The authors of this program are not liable for any loss, alteration or corruption of data related to the operation of this program. For more details, see the file COPYING. Compiling XTC ------------- To compile XTC, run these commands: ./configure make This will produce an executable called xtc. XTC has been found to work on the following systems: Redhat Linux 6.0, ncurses-4.2 Redhat Linux 5.2, ncurses-4.2 FreeBSD 3.1-RELEASE, ncurses-1.8.6 I do not know what other platforms it will work with, but I would like to hear from others about successes/problems they have had compiling, and if possible, solutions to these problems. Usage ----- If you are familiar with XTree Gold or it's WIN32 clone ZTreeWin (http://www.ztree.com) then you'll find XTC works in much the same way. I have listed all the keys that are available in the file "docs.html" but I intend to write some more detailed documentation in the future. There are a few differences from the original, however, due to the way that terminals work under UNIX: - Instead of pressing ESC, you must use F10. This is because when you press ESC, it is treated as the start of an escape sequence. There is a half-second pause before the terminal realises that it is only the ESC key that has been pressed, but this gets frustrating. Maybe it could be modified to accept both keys. - CTRL-M has the same keycode as the ENTER key. CTRL-I has the same keycode as the TAB key. And CTRL-H has the same keycode as the BACKSPACE key. Don't ask me why. The only one of these that is in use at the moment (or rather, that I have wanted to use so far) is CTRL-M for move tagged files. But since ENTER switches between file and directory mode, I have decided to make it CTRL-K, at least until I find a better solution to this problem. - XTree would display the CTRL and ALT commands whenever you held down one of these keys, and copyright info when you held down both. But in Linux, I can't find a way to detect when one of these is held down, apart from on the console where I can read from the keyboard directly. So XTC doesn't do this. The above limitations are minor but annoying, and I hope to fix them eventually, or at least find a better way around them. If you have any ideas on this, let me know! Development ----------- My plans for the project are basically to implement all the basic file operations (including CTRL and ALT operations), and then release a "stable" version before moving on to more advanced features such as viewing, editing and archive support. I would like to keep as close as possible to the original, so that users familiar with it will feel right at home with this version. Of course, there will be a few UNIX-specific issues and features that will need to be taken into account, such as those mentioned above, and things like pipes, mount points, etc. If you would like to participate in the development of this program, you'll probably want to have a copy of XTree Gold or ZTreeWin (which is very close to the original) handy to see how certain features work, unless you're fairly familiar with the program. XTree Gold was discontinued serveral years ago and is no longer available, but you can get a 30-day trial version of ZTreeWin from www.ztree.com. Both of these should run fine under vmware (www.vmware.com). XTree Gold is a bit flaky under DOSEmu, and I haven't tried ZTreeWin under WINE. There is a development mailing list for this program. For details, see http://www.area51.org.au/xtc Contacting the author --------------------- You can email me (Peter Kelly) at peter@area51.org.au