rpVTGeneral

General Information

1) Explain rpVT with three words!

Enhanced Auto View & Others (sorry, we used five words).

• Every time you highlight a file in ZTree, rpVT shows its contents in a separate window.

• Besides the contents, some primitive information is also shown about the file like CRC and some other information like number of lines, image size (for graphic files), etc.

• rpVT automatically detects the file nature and show it accordingly in a simplified form. As the time passes, more and more routines will be added to rpVT so, more types will be correctly treated and better view of each type will be achieved.

2) How can rpVT know where the highlight bar is in ZTree screen, for showing the file?

ZTree informs rpVT by writing that information in a very small file in its directory, called 'zbar.dat'. This file contains information on the full path for the file being highlighted and a few other parameters about commands and keystrokes. rpVT reads this file in a fraction of a second and opens and reads the file to be shown on its window.

3) I noted that the last access date of a file is not touched by ZTree itself when we browse over the files with the highlighted bar. This is understandable because Tree is actually not opening the files for reading or writing. But I noted also that, when rpVT is active and showing the files contents, the last access dates are also not touched. Isn't rpVT opening and reading the files? Why is the flag not updated?

Certain services provided by the operating systems, shell programs or some other special utilities should not touch the file dates unless there is a clear use of the file. This is especially true for massive operations like searches and auto-view settings. Why?
Because there is no specific intention on operating with a file and a non-preservation of the times will coarsely wipe out the file system from one of it's precious information.
rpVT considers itself not to be a regular application program because it does not produce modifications over the file so, it preserves the date/times.

4) I am not interested in the use of serial ports but the so called 'transformations' performed by rpVT are quite intriguing. Could you elaborate a little more about?

About every technical user of computers has a number of satellite programs that are used to perform some work on his/her files. Some of those programs perform very specialized operations and are uniquely useful. Some others, have only one or two of its simple features desirable for the users. All those programs have different interfaces and almost all of them use the abominated MS little window to select the file to operate with, there are no provision for repeated operation over a selected group of files etc, etc. Put way from the discussion the very specialized and uniquely useful programs. What do you have then? Lots of programs from which you use only one relatively simple feature and that are difficult to operate not to mention the collective limitation. rpVT wants to become the natural substitute for all those programs and to allow you to operate the features not only in a single file but in a whole list of selected files prepared by your already familiar ZTree.
As rpVT goes public, a number of requests will pop up, describing some desired functions to be implemented. Except for very specialized ones, we will try to implement all them.
Go back to FAQs and look at Y/Ctrl-Y commands for the ones that already exist.

5) In a phone conversation with one of your collaborators I listened to an explanation on how rpVT could be installed in a remote computer in a local network and still show what your main computer was browsing on ZTree. Needless to say that he lost me in the middle of the explanation. Can you redo that in writing?

Sure. Suppose I have a main computer called ZCmp with a nice 1280/1024 display and a second small portable called RCmp that drives an external 1024/768 display. Both computers are in a local network and the display for RCmp is just at the right side of the main display. ZCmp has one hard drive C: and RCmp has two drives C: and D: When the network was set the three drives where mapped respectively in the other computer like this:


Each computer sees 3 drives like this: (intentionally put in the corresponding order)


ZTree runs in ZCmp C:\ztree where it generates it's 'zbar.dat'.
rpVT runs in RCmp C:\rpVT\ where there are no 'zbar.dat' files. rpVT uses the following switches: /zdZ:\ztree /rmCZ,VC,WD.
The /zdZ:\ztree switch instructs rpVT to search for a 'zbar.dat' file in Z:\ztree.

rpVT reads the contents of the 'zbar.dat' in the main computer and uses its contents to open the files for viewing. Since the paths represent names of drives from the main computer, they become not useful because the computer where rpVT is installed calls those drives by different mapped names.

The /rmCZ,VC,WD switch will allow rpVT to build an internal substitution table for opening the files specified in 'zbar.dat'. Note that the C drive will be changed to Z, V to C and W to D. Now, every file in the three drives that ZCmp sees and documents in the 'zbar.dat', is correctly translated by rpVT and showed in the second screen right at the side of the main one.

I hope you don't feel very bad now about getting lost in the initial conversation! If you are not familiar yet with rpVT, we recommend that you revisit this question again, sometime in the future.

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