Fileworks
                        Preview Version 1.0 January 1988
                        
                       (C)1988 Strange Software Limited.
                              All Rights Reserved.

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Reading this file on screen
---------------------------

You may view this file on-screen with the DOS TYPE command:

                             TYPE FWORKS.TXT

If you have the DOS MORE program available, you can have the computer 
pause the file every screen by entering:

                          TYPE FWORKS.TXT | MORE


Printing this file
------------------

You may print this file straight away on any 80-column printer set up 
for operation with your PC. Make sure the printer is switched on, 
connected and 'on-line' (its 'select' or 'on-line' light is on). Then 
enter:

                           TYPE FWORKS.TXT >PRN

Or, if you have the DOS PRINT progrm available, enter:

                             PRINT FWORKS.TXT 

If you have a word processor program that can accept DOS ASCII files 
then you may get better results if you read this file into your word 
processor and take a few minutes to format it with page breaks and so 
forth appropriate to your printer.

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Introduction
------------
   
The Fileworks Preview Version supplied on this disk (the file FM.EXE) 
is supplied free so that you can get a first hand feel for Fileworks, 
Strange Software's brand new file management program. Fileworks is 
designed to make managing disks, directories and files much 
faster, easier and less error prone. Even if you've seen other 
DOS file management programs, we think you'll find that Fileworks 
offers some new and remarkable facilities. Indeed, Fileworks is 
so different, we think you should have the opportunity of trying 
it for yourself.
     Hence this special Preview Version.
     The Preview Version Fileworks is a working version of Fileworks 
that you can actually try out and use. Admittedly, it is lacks the 
more powerful and more advanced features of the full Fileworks package 
but it does have the basic features that we feel make it a delight to 
own and use - multiple pop-up windows, simple menus and fast shortcut 
keys, sorting of files, selective copying, deleting and renaming and 
so on.
     This document provides a quick tutorial introduction to the 
Preview Version of Fileworks so that you can try out the program on 
your own computer, with your own files and in your own time. If it 
turns out that you find the program useful (as we're sure you will), 
then consider buying the full program. It has many more features as 
well as all the qualities you expect from a top-notch program - high 
performance, full customisation for your hardware and straightforward 
printed documentation. Plus, you'll be eligible for technical support 
and be kept informed of future developments and upgrade offers.
        In the meantime, we hope you enjoy trying out (and using) this 
Preview Version.

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                     COPYRIGHT MATERIAL

The Fileworks Preview Version program and associated printed and 
machine-readable documentation are (C)1988, Copyright Strange Software 
Limited. Strange Software Limited grants you the right to freely make 
copies of the program for your own use or to give to friends and 
colleagues interested in trying out the program, provided that such 
copies are made and used with a view to buying the full version of 
Fileworks, that no charge is made for duplication, manufacture, 
shipping, administration or other costs, that such copies are not 
provided as part of a commercial transaction or an incentive to enter 
into a commercial transaction, that such copies contain both the 
program and this text document and that the program and documentation 
are not modified in any way.

                        DISCLAIMER

The Fileworks Preview Version software is supplied as is and without 
guarantees of any kind other than the media on which the software is 
supplied is free from defect. Strange Software accepts no liabilities 
for any faults in the software's operation or any damages arising 
directly or indirectly from its use. As with all new software, we 
recommend that, in the first instance, you try the software with 
experimental data files and disks.

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Starting Fileworks
-----------------

To run Fileworks, you need an IBM PC, XT, AT or compatible computer 
with PC-DOS or MS-DOS version 2.1 or higher and 256K or more memory. 

Fileworks does not need any special installation process - just copy 
the Fileworks program (in this case the Preview Version FM.EXE) onto a 
working floppy disk or into an appropriate sub-directory on your hard 
disk if you have one. 

To start the program, at the DOS prompt (A>, C> etc.), enter the 
command:

               FM

A Fileworks directory window will appear over your existing DOS screen 
and, on top of that, appears a sign-on box. You'll also notice that a 
white bar appears at the bottom of the screen. This is a brief 'help' 
line which always tells you what keys you can press next to control 
Fileworks. Once you know the program, you probably won't need to refer 
to this line (and you'll also discover there are some shortcut keys 
that it doesn't mention). For the moment, though, remember that if you 
get stuck, you've got some on-screen help in front of you.

Before going any further, we'd best mention display types just in case 
you're not looking at a very readable screen. The Fileworks Preview 
Version supports standard display modes and the common display types 
(MDA, CGA, EGA and Hercules) automatically. Unlike the full program, 
it can't be permanently customised to use a special display mode to 
exactly suit the capabilities of your equipment. For most people this 
won't be a problem but it might be for users who have IBM 
Colour/Graphic Adapter (CGA) type displays on their computers.

Firstly, real IBM CGAs flicker annoyingly when the screen is updated 
quickly, as it is by Fileworks. If this flicker, often called 'snow', 
is a problem on your computer, you can ask the Preview Version of 
Fileworks to avoid it by starting it with the command: FM -S

Secondly, you may have a monochrome (or LCD) screen attached to a CGA 
type display and you may find that Fileworks' colour is not 
particularly readable. You can opt to use a black-and-white rather 
than colours when you start the Preview Version of Fileworks by 
entering the command: FM -B.

Of course, if you have a CGA that flickers attached to a monochrome 
screen, then you can use FM -BS to avoid both problems in one go. 

Back to more important matters... and the Fileworks window. Press the 
Spacebar to remove the sign-on box (if you like you can press the down 
arrow to select 'More Information' and then continue from there). 

Fileworks Windows
-----------------

A Fileworks window looks much like a normal DOS DIR listing or, 
indeed, the file display from other file management programs. In 
addition to the normal information about your files and directories, 
Fileworks also displays file attributes - special settings that DOS 
keeps about each file. If a file has a particular attribute set (or 
on), then its letter appears next to the file's date and time. If not, 
a full stop appears. The letters mean:

     A ... Archive 
     R ... Read-Only 
     H ... Hidden
     S ... System

If you're not familiar with attributes then you can ignore them - just 
be aware that your disks may have a few hidden files on them that 
will show up when you're using Fileworks (for example, DOS itself 
appears in two files that are read-only, hidden and system). If 
you are familiar with attributes and soemtimes need to alter 
them, you'll be please to hear that even the Preview Version of 
Fileworks lets you quickly reset or set any particular 
attributes.

You can move the highlight bar up and down the window to display other 
files with the up and down arrow keys. As you might expect, the Home 
key takes you to the top of the list and the End key to the bottom 
(PgUp and PgDn move one window-full at a time too).

Of course, if you know the name of the file or file(s) you're after, 
it can be a litte bit time consuming to move the highlight onto them 
in this way. Well... you could just try typing the file's name! As you 
type, Fileworks will move the highlight to the next file it can find 
whose name matches what you've typed so far. You can usually get 
straight to a particular file this way by typing the first three or 
four letters of its name.

Once you've located one file this way, you'll be tempted to try 
another. Fileworks can't tell by itself whether you're typing some 
more letters for the file you've just found or starting on a new one - 
to let the program know you found one file and want another, just tap 
the Backspace key or one of the cursor pad keys. (Or, in frustration, 
just keep tapping the initial letter of the file you're after - 
Fileworks will get the message in the end!).

Finally, some of us have a lot of files to look after and a Fileworks 
window only shows 12 at once. You can switch from the normal 'long' 
and detailed display to a 'short' view that shows only the names of 
files (in 3 columns - 36 in all). There's a menu option on the View 
menu (which we'll discuss in a moment) to do this but it's even 
quicker to tap ^L (the ^ symbol means hold down the Ctrl key and press 
L). This is the 'shortcut' key to the menu option and will switch a 
window from Long view to Short view and back again whenever you need 
to. 

Short view is handy for quickly scanning disk and directories. 
You'll notice that directories also appear in Short View with 
square brackets [] around them to distinguish them from 
filenames.

Sorting and Menus
-------------------------------

Fileworks can sort the files in its window any which way that's 
convenient to the task in hand. Normally the files are given sorted by 
name in ascending order. To change this, use the View menu or the ^O 
shortcut key. Let's use the menu to show you how all Fileworks' menus 
work.

To call up the menus, press the Esc (Escape) key. A menu appears from 
which you can select further menus, the information box you saw when 
you started the program or opt to leave Fileworks.

The four further menu choices are:

     Files...      which deals with selecting files and directories
     Actions...    which actually performs operations on files
     Window...     which controls Fileworks' windows
     View...       which controls how a window displays its file.

Before going anywhere, notice that some options are marked with a key 
to press - these are the shortcut keys you need to go straight to a 
particular operation. For example, ^A (Ctrl and A) would take you 
straight to the Actions menu. ^F is for the Files menu and so on.
Most of the major options in Fileworks have these shortcut keys.

For now, let's call up the View menu and try out the sorting options. 
Use the down arrow to move the menu highlight over the View... option 
(or press the V key to leap straight to it). Then you can press the 
Spacebar, Ins, Return or Enter key (whichever comes to hand) to 
activate the option.

The View menu looks much like the first menu. You can choose long or 
short view and one of four types of sort:

          By Name     (The normal order)
          By Type     (Useful when you're clearing out particular 
                       sorts of files)
          By Date     (Useful when you're looking for files of a 
                       certain age or that have been changed 
                       recently)
          By Size     (Useful when you fitting lots of files onto
                       packed floppies or looking for a file that 
                       you know is very small or big)

You can have your sort both ways too by choosing Ascending or 
Descending from the bottom of the menu.

Before we leave the View menu, notice the little diamond marks. These 
appear next to the currently selected options so that you can quickly 
check how the current window is currently displayed. 

Changing drive and directories
------------------------------

A Fileworks' window isn't stuck on the drive and directory you were in 
when you started the program. There are lots of ways to move about a 
hard disk or between disks on different drives.

If you position the highlight over a directory, you can switch to it 
simply by pressing the Ins key. Once you are in a sub-directory, you 
can also choose the standard DOS .. directory entry to move back up 
one directory.

To travel further afield, call up the Files menu and select the Goto 
option (or just tap ^G). A window labelled the 'Changer' appears. It 
may look a bit complicated at first but you'll find it a fast way of 
getting from place to place soon enough.

The 'Changer' displays your current drive and directory, along with a 
list of alternative directories you can go to. Use the up/down arrow 
keys to pick any of the alternatives - you can then move down into a 
directory with the right arrow key or back up a level with the left 
arrow key. When you've got the directory you want to be in 
highlighted, press the Return key to accept your choice and you'll 
find the Fileworks window moves onto that directory.

As you might have guessed by now, you can also simply type the path to 
the directory you want to be in - the 'Changer' will follow your 
keystrokes like a normal Fileworks window. For example, to get to a 
directory called \SAMPLE, simply press

  \ S A M ....

Usually, you'll get to the directory you want with just a few 
keystrokes. If you type the directory name in this way, you *do not* 
have to highlight the final name with the right arrow key - just press 
Return and Fileworks will fill in the rest for you. (A good one to 
remember is ^G \ RETURN which always takes you to the root directory 
on the current disk in three keystrokes.)

The 'Changer' lets you change drives too - just press the TAB key to 
move to the next drive along (from A to B or C to D and so on) or 
SHIFT and TAB to cycle back the other way. (Like any program, 
Fileworks would rather you had disks in your floppy drives before you 
attempt this though...).

More than one window
--------------------

Once you've mastered one Fileworks window, you can open another. And 
another. And another, as far as memory will allow (The Preview Version 
is limited in the memory it will use but you'll get the idea.). 
Fileworks doesn't blinker you to looking at one drive or directory at 
once - you can 'open up' your hard disk to really see what files are 
where and what you need to do sort them out, back them up, rearrange 
them and so on.

To open a new window, call up the Window menu and choose Open (you'll 
probably spot that there's a shortcut key, gray+, to do this - it's 
the large + key on your numeric cursor pad if you want to try it). 
When you open a new window, Fileworks produces the 'Changer' so that 
you can quickly say which drive or directory should appear in the 
window. The window then appears, overlapping the first.

You can move between windows with the TAB and SHIFT-TAB shortcut keys 
or with the Next and Previous options on the Window menu. When you 
change windows, Fileworks brings the new current window to the front 
of the screen and highlights its name. 

You can also move windows around by holding down the Ctrl key and 
pressing the left and right arrows and the PgUp and PgDn keys. this 
lets you arrange the windows so that you can see just the ones you 
want to perform a particular task.

When you've finished with a window, you can close it either from the 
Window menu or with the gray- key situated just above the gray+ key 
that opens windows. In general, you should only open as many windows 
as you need to for the simple reasons that the screen can get very 
crowded and Fileworks, certainly in the Preview Version, can get very 
short on memory. Even so, when you need to perform some major 
housekeeping operation, there is nothing like using the multiple 
window facility to make the job easier.

Marking files 
-------------

So far, we've merely been looking at directories and files. Fileworks 
is all about manipulating them - copying any particular set of files, 
moving them from disk to disk and so on. The Fileworks Preview Version 
provides basic facilities, including Copy, Move, Delete, Rename and 
'Tinker'. These are all in the Actions... menu.

If you call this up (^A is the shortcut key), you'll sadly discover 
that the only one which appears to work is the 'New directory' option. 
The other menu options have a bracket ( next to them and the highlight 
will not move onto them - the bracket symbol is Fileworks' way of 
indicating that an option is not available at a particular time for 
some, generall obvious, reason.

In this case, it's because we've not said which files we want to copy 
or delete or rename or whatever. Before you can do anything to a file 
in Fileworks, you must mark it! To do this, simply put the highlight 
over the file in question and press the Spacebar; the file will change 
colour to show that it is now marked. 

If you decide you didn't really want that file marked, press the 
Spacebar again and it will unmark itself. If you want to mark several 
files, use the Return key - this marks a file and then automatically 
advances the highlight to the next one. You can go right round a 
directory this way. Finally, if you change your mind entirely, you can 
choose the Unmark option (Files menu) to remove all the marks from all 
your files.

Marks in Fileworks are pretty durable; they don't go away until you've 
completed some operation or specifically remove them with the 
Spacebar, Return key or Unmark command. 

You can mark files in a window and then use Goto to change the 
directory displayed by the window; when you come back to the original 
directory, the marks will still be there.

Similarly, you can even close a window with marks in it. If you later 
open another window onto that directory or change some other window so 
that it looks onto it, you marks will still be there.

There's a reason for stressing this - it is possible to have marked 
files that are no longer displayed on the screen (either because their 
window is covered or because no window looks onto them). If you're 
used to other file manager programs, it's quite easy to assume the 
only marked files are those you can see. With Fileworks it simply 
isn't the case; Fileworks lets you mark any files anywhere in 
different drives and directories, ready to perform some operation on 
all of them in a single-stroke. 

The Preview Version of Fileworks includes one of Fileworks' options 
for finding all your marked files in turn - the Jump Marked option on 
the Files... menu (^J shortcut). This takes the highlight in the 
current window to the next marked file in its directory. If it reaches 
the end of the directory and there are files marked elsewhere, then 
the window changes to that directory and continues from there. If 
you're using the Preview Version of Fileworks, it's advisable to 
always step through your marked files in the way before you perform 
any potentially dangerous operation, such as the delete option.

Copying and moving files
------------------------

Copying and moving files is simple and foolproof with Fileworks. 
Simply mark all the files you want to copy or move and then open (or 
move into) a window onto the drive or directory you want to copy or 
move the files to. Selecting the Copy or Move option then performs the 
task, taking the files from the windows where you marked them into the 
window at the front of the screen.

Unlike the DOS COPY command, Fileworks won't overwrite an existing 
file if it happens to have the same name as one you are copying or 
moving. Instead, Fileworks will stop and ask you if you want to 
replace (overwrite) the existing file, skip copying the file or give 
up the whole operation. You can then go back and rename either of the 
two files appropriately.

Renaming files
--------------

The Fileworks Preview Version will let you rename a group of marked 
files with little typing. Each filename is presented to you in turn - 
you can type a whole new name (just start typing) or use the left, 
right, home, end, Ins and Backspace keys to modify the existing name 
without retyping it (if you change your mind, pressing ^R will bring 
back the old name). To leave the name as it is, just press Return (the 
file will stay marked if you skip it in this way - remember to unmark 
it when you've finished with it). You can also cancel the whole 
operation by pressing Escape.

Tinkering with files
--------------------

Fileworks lets you alter both the attributes of files and the time and 
date 'stamps' that record when the file was last changed via its 
Tinker menu. These features are mostly for advanced users - most 
people don't need to set alter these values in the course of 
normal work. 

If you are unsure of what the attribute values mean on files, don't 
alter them without good reason. In particular, don't be tempted to 
copy or move files which you haven't created and that are marked 
hidden or system. There's usually a good reason why such files have 
been hidden from view; DOS relies on such files and the hard disk 
installation option of some software packages use file like this that 
should not be moved or tampered with.

More about Fileworks
--------------------

We're not able to show you all Fileworks can do in this quick guide 
and in the Preview Version of the program. But we hope that we've 
given you a good idea of whether or not you'd find Fileworks a useful 
and enjoyable purchase. 

If you'd like to know more about Fileworks, and our other products, 
please write to:

                    Strange Software Limited,
                     40 Bowling Green Lane,
                         London EC1R 0NE. 


To order Fileworks direct, send a cheque or postal order for 
£29.95, payable to Strange Software Limited to the above address. VAT 
is included and post and packing is free. Overseas orders: please 
deduct 15% VAT and add £3 to cover shipping.