Margin Software - Re-inventing the wheel, every time.

In no event shall the authors or distributors be liable to any party for direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use of this software, its documentation, or any derivatives thereof, even if the authors have been advised of the possibility of such damage.

The authors and distributors specifically disclaim any warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. This software is provided on an "as-is" basis, and the authors and distributors have no obligation to provide maintenance, support, updates, enhancements, or modifications.

Welcome to the great world of VFS! Have you recently been given or purchaced a Visor, and thought, "Gee, I wish it had more memory! I'm going to buy a Matchbook Drive CF adapter!" Did you go out and get a new Palm m50x because it had SD support?

Does the software that came with these devices not allow you to arrange, or even delete, non-palm files?

VFSBrowser is the solution to this problem!

Pat McCombie

"The speed is incredible - this is the fastest I have seen a program list the files (and I believe I have tested all of them)."

Friday, January 25^th, 2002
Finally I get to work on it again! Exams rock (especially if I don't have any ;) Some bugfixes, and some graphical changes appear in this release. E-mail me if you think I should add icons next to the file names. They'd look something like this:

Friday, December 28^th, 2001
Well, after the Long Pause, I have finally started working on it again! This version is completely re-written to use GCC instead of CodeWarrior (don't ask) and has a complete new code base. As our motto goes, re-inventing the wheel, every time!

The new version includes looking at files on-board (with a whole raft of new preferences, but those come last,) and a complete lack of features, once again. This is what I get for starting over! ^_^;

	Card scanning and directory browsing.
	Selection highlighting. Now you can see what file you selected before doing bad things to it.
	Current working directory display.
	Completely functional scroll bars.
	Popup display telling you what VFSBrowser is doing (listing, copying, etc.)
	Popup list to choose an operation.
	When selecting directories you can now delete them or get info on them. To actually switch directories, you will need to be in another mode (copy, volume info, &c.
	Volume selection (RAM/ROM, volume list.)
	Second column customization (file size, creator ID, data type ID, # records, and attributes)
	Remembering of preferences (last volume, directory, sort, and column display.)
	Volume/Card Information dialog for external and internal cards.

	Directory creation.
	File rotines for deleting recucivly, creating/viewing text files (soon now,) and more.
	DOC file conversion to/from Palm.
	Sorting and other options (hidden files, etc.)
	Application launching.
	File beaming.
	Battery indicator.
	Setable dates (modified/created) on card.
	Delete Macintosh Resource files (Resource.frk, Finder.dat, etc.) automatically and recursivly.
	Marking read-only/hidden/special files and volumes with a mark or color.
	Percent display when copying files and percent overall when copying multiple.
	File search (grep anybody?).
	Display configuration/preferences dialogs.
	Context sensitive help system.
	Mimetype based plugins.
	"File" typing (see Linux "file" utility).
	Better stability (fewer "random" crashes...)

The following is a list of just what those attributes actually mean.

Internal (RAM/ROM)
B	Backup
H	Hidden
L	Launchable
O	Open
P	Beam-Protected
R	Read-only
S	Stream

External (Card)
A	Archive
D	Directory
H	Hidden
L	Link
R	Read-only
S	System

It's easy, just install VFSBrowser.prc and enjoy. A good tip is to also backup your device using a method other than the Palm Desktop software! Just-in-case! This documentation is also available in iSilo 2.x and 3.x versions, and are included in this package. Source code can be given upon request, though there isn't much to see yet.

When you run VFSBrowser for the first time, or for the first time after a soft-reset, it might take longer than usual to get past the startup phase. This is normal. The VFS library is organizing itself, creating buffers, etc. This should only happen once (after each reset) and should be much quicker from then on.

If you are using a device with PalmOS 4.0, you have no need to worry, VFS is built into the system - the same goes for any device with a built-in expantion slot. Visors, however, require software such as VFS Helper from Kopsis Engineering. VFS Helper is a replacement library to handle VFS calls between my program and the card.

Just delete "VFSBrowser" from memory. Careful not to delete VFSHelper! (for those that use it, of course)

If you are viewing this off of the web, you're probably wondering where the heck can I get this great utility? On second thought, you might not be, but I'm going to tell you anyway. ^_^

Description	Hits	Link	Modified
Zipped package	923	VFSBrowser.zip	Jan 29 2002 07:16:01 GMT UPDATED
Palm executable	198	VFSBrowser.prc	Jan 29 2002 07:16:01 GMT UPDATED
Documentation (html)	53	VFSBrowser.php (this file)	Jan 29 2002 07:17:44 GMT UPDATED
Files marked updated have changed since your last visit (or in the last hour.)

You can contact me via e-mail: mbevan@kyhm.com, snail mail:

You can attempt to contact me through ICQ: 34912768.

VFSBrowser will not work on a TRGPro (typed too fast and typed TRGBro, heh) due to the fact TRGPro doesn't have VFS support as far as I know. TRGPro has it's own way of dealing, and requires it's own API to work. I'm not going to support the TRGPro due to me being too lazy to get the API and adjust all my VFS routines around it.

Apparently there have also been issues with MemPlug units using piVFS. I'm going to be talking to the MemPlug folks about it.

Well, I just discovered yet another minor/major issue. Apparently my program doesn't handle having the "/" character in file names... It dumps an "invalid handle" error and resets. There is no way that I can see to get around this (it bombs when loading the directory listing, so I can't predict it before hand.) Oh well, you shouldn't be using that character in filenames anyway!

If you find VFSBrowser crashes, download the debug version and e-mail me the number/letter at the top of the last dialog before crashing. You'll know what I mean...

To all of those who have helped me in any way, thanks. Special thanks truly need to go out to the following: