First thank you for a wonderful utility and the continuing development of Dopus.
I used to use Directory Opus 4 on the Amiga (let's face it, what Amiga user didn't ?) and one of the most useful features of that version was 'Classes'.
Classes were tied in with filetypes and were used to recognise a filetype. One of the ways classes were a fantastic idea and tool was that you could open a file..walk x number of bytes into the file and discover unique information used to identify that filetype.
e.g An Amiga executable file always has the 03 F3 values found at the 3rd and 4th bytes respectively.
My question is, is this functionality available in Dopus 10 and if not could you please consider adding it to future versions.
The reason I request this functionality is I wish to have any filetypes recognised in Dopus (mostly my old Amiga files) particularly files that do not have file extensions.
With this feature any user could 'write' their own filetype classes and break out of the very limiting filetype recognition via file extensions, being one of my biggest problems with Windows.
Ok..I don't think that the functionality I want is still in Dopus.
I cannot (yet) find anyway to group filetypes except by file extension, which is what I want to get around - not having to use file extensions to recognise a filetype.
Well, then i´m not sure, if i got you right. The file type groups (in -> settings -> file types -> file type groups) can also hold file types of your own definition, that is, self defined groups.
Naturally, file types are defined by their extensions, even though Opus allows you to include file types in more than only one group (you can have, for instance, PDFs in the images group & the documents group).
Plugins are able to determine filetype by looking at the actual file contents, so you might be able to do some of what you want using a plugin. It depends on exactly what you want to do.
(Opus's internal viewers also tend to look at file contents rather than file extensions, although it depends on the filetype, the speed of the device, and some other stuff.)
I did look there and read through the Dopus help file and it all seems to hinge on file extensions just like the OS that Dopus is running on. Whatever happened to OSes using file headers for filetype info ?? - I know windows never has. This whole file extension idea is badly flawed (I'm not referring to Dopus here but the use of file extensions for file type recognition.), particularly when files have headers to describe what they are.
What I want is the ability for Dopus to recognise any filetype that I provide info for. Just as I stated in the original post as how Dopus 4 used classes on the Amiga.
If you have used them before on Dopus Amiga you should get my gist.
I was going to write an Amiga filetype recogniton and handling program for Windows using Delphi but since buying Dopus 10 and remembering the elegant way filetype recognition was handled by Dopus 4 Amiga, I was hoping to have Dopus do the work for me - besides I think it would be a really valuable feature of Dopus. I may well be in the minority here but you don't ask, you don't get.
Thanks Leo,
I will look into plugins then but please consider this feature for a future version.
From what I remember, Windows actually can use file contents to determine file type, but it's almost never used as it is very slow to have to open every file to determine its type, and it's rarely needed (of course, since everyone's forced to use extensions so files tend to have them ).
(I may be confused and thinking of something slightly different; there are really a few different filetype systems in Windows for different things. e.g. The MIME types registration is completely separate to the main filetype registration, even though they both do the same thing. I'm pretty sure at least one of them allows headers to be inspected.)
Opus will recognise most image types (and several other file types) even if they have incorrect or missing extensions, and allows plugins to be written which add to what it will recognise.
[quote="leo"]
To what end? That's a method, not an end result. [/quote]
Sorry - I don't understand what you mean ??
By employing the 'method' I can attain my desired 'end result'.
I have a lot of files without extensions on my PC - mostly Amiga files but there are others. I would like Dopus to provide a way for me to have them recognised on my system (without having to run an emulator and get them recognised by an 'Amiga'). I can then add icons to the different Amiga filetypes that Dopus now recognises and filetype actions. Dopus 4 (possibly other versions but its the one I used) used to do this on the Amiga. I also transfer files between Amiga and PC (not that has any real bearing).
I did briefly look into MIME types and I don't think that system is appropriate for what I want. I will delve deeper though.
The best way I can think that you might understand me is to fire up an old Amiga or Winuae or whatever Amiga emulator and run Dopus 4 and create some filetype classes.
I am still pretty new to Dopus 10 and there is much to learn being a very comprehensive tool. There may in fact be a way to achieve that which I desire without adding my requested functionality to Dopus so I will keep at it.
If I have success I will share my findings.
AFAIK Windows recognizes filetype via extension, Amiga-OS recognizes a filetype looking into the file-header (which is more safe, but is much slower).
But: Which files can be used on both systems without using an emulator? I have transfered als my old songs from Amiga to PC, added a file-extension and made a filetype with a PC-Player playing all kinds of formats. Just as example.
I also wrote a lot of mods using Med/Octamed on the Amy and even bought the PC version of Med Sound Studio to write more mods and update the existing ones with 16bit samples. Awesome at the time !!
You can read Amigaguide files on the PC with a program called Winguide. My old pascal programs can be massaged to be used in Delphi on the PC but other than reading text files and of course manipulating and converting icons in Dopus, not really many files. Oh iff piccys in photoshop and Lightwave files in er.. lightwave.
My main aim wasn't to 'use' the files on the PC (except through emulation) but just to have them 'recognised'. - I see this may be a hard distinction to describe / discern.
What I have done is created collections of my Amiga files which have extensions i.e .library, .catalog, .DMS, .guide, .info, .med, .mod, .prefs, .lha, .lzx etc..
Another thing is that my Amiga files are 'live'. I use them in Winuae all the time. I mostly use hardfiles and I have a dedicated Amiga Hardrive that I use between Winuae and a real A4000. Obviously this drive and its associated files are not recognised by windows. I set-up the A4000's HD on Winuae, disconnect the drive from PC and plug it into the A4000 and voila, it boots the A4000.
Also I have mirrored the Aminet on my hard-drive and so have access to that when running WinUae.
I wrote also lots of songs, but mainly with Oktalyzer (first Soundtracker, also some with OctaMed Midi). I copied them once from my A3000 with SCSI device and made a hardfile from this system, which runs fine in WinUAE after some modifications (have a Picasso IV, needed some time to get it working). From time to time I remix the better songs with Reason 6.5, but its complicated to get the same "sound/feeling" on PC. 8 Bit rules!
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