--------------------------------- LDos V1(3) for AMOS1.3 and above. LDos is (C) Niklas Sjöberg 1992 --------------------------------- Yes readers, we have done it again. Nothing But AMOS is the only AMOS diskmag that gives away COMPLETE AMOS extensions. This is the full documentation for the excellent LDos AMOS extension. Beginners beware! For obvious reasons we have split Niklas' original documentation into several parts. Each of these parts - or indeed chapters - are in Ascii format and as such an be printed out from your favourite word processor if required. How can we possibly top this excellent freebie next time? With another extension of course. Issue 6 will contain Niklas' other excellent AMOS extension.....Lserial. BE THERE, YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE. NOTE:- There are infact 2 versions of LDOS contained in the LDOS_AMOS_EXTENSIONS directory of this disk. One is for Classic AMOS and the other for AMOS Professional. Make sure that you install the correct one for your system. "What you just have received is a new fast, and efficient extension for AMOS V1.3 and higher. It is supposed to correct some misfeatures of AMOS and add some functions not available in AMOS. The official name is 'Ldos' which seemed logical when I started out, but since that a lot other functions have been added which are far from DOS-functions. I got the idea about Ldos after waiting over fifteen (15!) minutes for Line Input to read a 300 Kb textfile from floppy. After 15 minutes I stopped the program, it still wasn't finished :-) Then I thought, "while I am at it..", and I came up with some new interesting commands. Here is a small feature list of Ldos : o New load and save routines. o Support for BOTH load and save in the same file without reopening it. o Ability to save and load from the middle of the file. o Up to three channels open simultaneously. o Commands for setting/reading : o filenotes o protectionbits o dates *- o Environmentvariables o Determine filelength without having to assign a channel to the file. o Determine if a name belongs to a file or a directory. o New, very easy to use, directorycommands. Doesn't use any bufferspace as AMOS dir-command. Only one name is read at the time, unlike AMOS dir-command, meaning no bufferover- flow, never to many files in a dir and 0 waittime before names can be displayed on screen. *- Commands for handling recursive reading and/or popping out *- of directory-reading and being able to return to the exact *- position later and continue reading. The number of different *- active "popped" directories are only limited by your memory. *- o Commands to list all system- assignments, disks, volumes and *- other devices and obtaining further information about disks. o Fast stringhandling to and from banks. Forget Peek and Poke. o Fast replace, and filter-out-function. o "Line Input"-commands from buffer. This routine manages to "Line Input" >40 Kb/sec on my machine (with an AdSpeed) and that includes loadingtime from HD in 1Kb-blocks! o Fast time and date-routines. Command for getting the current time and date, returned in strings, easy to process. Highly optimized. o Convert to and from datestamps, does not use slow library- functions. Highly optimized. o Support for the filerequester in req.library. Totally configurable with optional cache (no need to re-read the dir) for floppy-users. Pops up on the Workbench. *- Also support for font-mode which lets the user pick a *- font in a really neat way. *- Set a current dir for the requester which doesn't affect *- your programs current directory. o Commands for decrunching PowerPacker datafiles, all compression modes and known versions, without passwordlock. *- o Cryptation, DeCryptation with password using a pretty 'hard- *- to-crack'-algoritm. (see hints for more info) o Commands to handle any device using an IOSTD-stucture, specially written with trackdisk.device in mind. o Run executable programs and scripts. Support for I/O in a DOS-console window. o Load fonts from disk, making them available to Get Rom Fonts without needing to scan the whole fonts-directory (sigh!) o A complete set of ARexxsupport commands. Create your host, start scripts with any name located anywhere on the disk. You may also address and send commands to other hosts directly, without starting any scripts. All functions are completely bullet-proof (on system-level), meaning no software failures. *- o Conversion-routine from ANSI/VT100-sequences to AMOS control-codes. *- Supports the most frequently used sequences and is much faster *- than the console.device's own routines. Highly optimized. *- o Word- extraction/count which works similar to the ARexxcommands *- Word and Words.Greatly enhances the possibilities for the prog- *- rammer to parse configurationsfiles and commandlines. TO DO IN FUTURE VERSIONS ------------------------ Correct bugs and add features suggested by YOU. Also a lot of new functions will be added as soon as I find some time to read the new Autodocs. Still locale isn't supported since Commodore haven't released this library to the public. We are also waiting for the amigaguide.library to be released... Already some goodies available in Relase 2, only, has been implemented, and there are more on the way. HOW TO INSTALL LDos ------------------- Simply copy LDos.LIB to the directory where you have your other extensions. Enter LDos.LIB as extension number 10 in your *.ENV file(s). Also add LDos.LIB to the same number in your compiler-configuration(s). Make sure that you state the full path between the brackets { and } in the compiler-configuration. ++ Alexander Folkesson pointed out that in Compiler V1.34 you must ++ edit you Ramos.config in order to compile programs without error- ++ messages. Haven't had time to check this out myself.. HOW TO READ THIS MANUAL ----------------------- The manual can be read as you like. For your convenience the manual is split into nine general parts. 1. General file commands, directorycommands etc. 2. String commands and bufferhandling. 3. Date commands. 4. Filerequester in req.library. 5. Device commands, error codes and CMDcommands. 6. Misc commands, which didn't fit anywhere else. 7. ARexx control, making hosts and communicating. 8. Ldos Errorcodes. 9. Disclaimers and info. READ THIS! Text marked with *- are new features added in version 2, so to read the news load your favorite texteditor and search for *- if you come from version 1 of LDos. Text marked -- are new stuff for version 2.1 Text marked ++ are new stuff for version 2.5 CONTINUED IN NEXT ARTICLE.