Directory Opus 4 : Tutorial One

WHAT IS DIRECTORY OPUS ?

One of the questions I seem to get asked
by newcomers to the Amiga scene is just
what is this program called Directory
Opus. I have to reply that I would find
using my Amiga pretty impossible without
Dopus. With Dopus you can file manage your
whole system and find, move and copy files
at the drop of a hat. Also its very useful
for launching applications and viewing
files such as pictures and text documents.

I find Dopus invaluable when it comes to
creating folders, checking system files
and checking the status of files in terms
of size and date of entry, particulary
after file changes and installs.

There is really very little Dopus can`t
do and as a guide I have decided that my
first Amiga tutorial will feature this
most splendid of pieces of software. I will
feature Dopus4 as this is my weapon of
choice.

DIRECTORY OPUS

This page will explain those buttons:

Fire up DOPUS and you will be greeted by
the opening window, which is pretty well
where all the activity occurs.

One of the first things you will need to
do is check that you have configured all
your drives on the machine. To do this
drop down the first PROJECT menu from
the top and hit the CONFIGURATION menu item.
You will have the option here of configuring
many things but at this time you really need
to find your hard-drive, so click DRIVES.
Next you will be given a window with all
the VOLUME BUTTONS on your machine. If you
have downloaded a Configuration File or
moved a hard-drive from another location
there may be drives that are listed that
don`t occur on your machine.

Simply click one of the BUTTONS, say HD0 or
HD1 or Work say. Don`t worry about messing
things up. Next up you will be given another
window. Note the name of the VOLUME and
check out the magnifying glass next to it.
Click it. If the PATH for the VOLUME exists
then you will be given a window with the
contents of that VOLUME. If however DOPUS
cannot find that VOLUME then you will
see the screen flash and if you had my
machine hear a very sexy woman give out
a large sigh.

What you need to do from the window if no
drive or VOLUME exists is now find your
VOLUME on your machine from the drop down
list. When you click on your VOLUME you
will see the contents of your DRIVE
and the name will be entered into the
PATH on the window. Say OK.

Now enter the name of your Volume in the
area that says NAME .. you can also give
the tab a new colour and font colour. The
name here is not important as the PATH
below is what DOPUS looks for. When finished
simply OK and then you will cycle back through
the windows. On the next screen choose SAVE
and then OK this to return to DOPUS. Now, you
should have a BUTTON in the bottom left showing
your DRIVE.

You can have many drives on DOPUS far more
than the list shows. To get to other drives
simply right click on the BUTTON to cycle
through the drives. This is very useful when
you are trying to access floppy drives, CD drives,
ZIP drives etc.

Now when you click the BUTTON of your drive the
window above will show the contents of that
drive. By clicking the drawer in the PANE
above you can access the contents of that
drawer. If you highlight the right hand PANE
and click your BUTTON you will see again the
contents of your DRIVE. If you create a NEW
DRAWER in the drive, you can open this, then
by highlighting a file on the left pane, COPY
the file by clicking the COPY BUTTON and like
magic copy that file to the folder in the
right PANE. And that is basically file management
at its very simplest.

I will now refer to CUAmiga which
had copies of Dopus4 in their issue for
Feb 1995. If you don`t have a copy of
DOPUS4 then mail me private.

THE BUTTONS:

ALL: Selects all drawers and files in the
source window - saving you time.
NONE: Deselects all selected files in the
source window.
PARENT: Moves back to the previous drawer
you were in.
ROOT: Moves back to the root directory.
COPY: Highlight one or more files in the
source window, click on copy and the file(s)
will be copied to the destination.
MOVE: Just like Copy, except the file(s) in
the source window are deleted after after
the copy operation.
RENAME: Click on one or more files and then
on this button and you`ll be asked to enter
new file names.
DELETE: Highlight files and drawers and click
here to delete them. WARNING. You can`t get
these back once you have deleted them.
MAKEDIR: Prompts you for a name and then
creates a drawer with that name in the source
window.
ASSIGN: To be covered in next TUTORIAL
CHECKFIT: Adds up the sizes of all selected FILES/
DRAWERS and sees if they will fit on the drive
in the destination window. The result is displayed
in the status bar.
GETSIZES: Similar to Checkfit but a quicker
approximation.
HUNT: search the selected files and drawers in the
source window for a given file name.
SEARCH: Scan through the files and drawers selected
for a given file name.
RUN: Executes the selected programs. You`ll be asked
to enter parameters, see the individual manual for
details of these perameters.
DATESTAMP: Changes the date stamp of the selected
files to that entered. For the current date press
the space bar and then return.
PROTECT: To be covered next TUTORIAL.
ICONINFO: Changes icon perameters, similar to
that given in the REQUESTER when you click on
INFO menu on the WORKBENCH.
ARC EXTRACT: Extracts files from compressed `LHA`
archives to the destination path. LHA is a common
compression system used by Public Domain software
and BBS systems. Not available on 1.3 Amigas.
ENCRYPT: Adds or removes password protection files.
Select a file, click on this and enter password,
now you can only access it if you know the password.
To remove the password click on this button and
enter the password with a minus symbol `-` at the
front of the password.
READ: Displays the selected TEXT files.
HEX READ: Displays a file using the HEX numbering
system, probably only useful to programmers.
SHOW: Displays an IFF, Animation, icon or font file.
PLAY: Highlight an 8SVX sound file and click on this
button to hear it.
PRINT: Print
PATH NAMES: These two allow you to type in PATH
names rather than clicking on drawers - if you
know the full path name this can save you a lot
of time.

HELP: Directory Opus has a comprehensive built in
help facility. To use this press `HELP` on the
keyboard and then click any part on the program,
a help screen will then be displayed. You can
keep on clicking on things to get help until
you press `HELP` again.


Directory Opus: Dopus Library v22.6
Copywright 1990-94 Jonathan Potter
Compiled on Oct 31st 1994.