MCAmiga XPE

MCAmiga - X-Phile Edition
=========================

A Norton Commander / Midnight Commander style two-panel file manager for the
whole Amiga family. It runs in a text window (or its own screen) and lets you
browse, copy, move, view, edit, compress and compare files entirely from the
keyboard, with optional mouse and drag-and-drop support.

This is MCAmiga - X-Phile Edition (version 1.1). The original project is by
alb42 and lives at https://github.com/alb42/MCAmiga. Licensed CC0 - see the
LICENSE file. The X-Phile Edition adds a pull-down menu bar, quick view,
directory history, sort/filter dialogs, a properties/protection editor,
fullscreen toggling, directory comparison and many smaller refinements on top
of the original.

Supported systems
=================

  System         CPU / ABI
  ------         ---------
  AmigaOS 3.x    m68k (68020+; a 68000 build also exists)
  AmigaOS 4.x    PowerPC
  MorphOS 3.x    PowerPC
  AROS           i386 (ABIv0), ARM RasPi 1-3 (ABIv0), x86-64 (ABIv1, NonSMP)

A secondary Linux build mode exists in the Lazarus project, but the program is
built around Amiga units and the text-mode RTL, so it is meaningfully usable
only on Amiga-family targets.


Requirements
============

  - AmigaOS 3.x:          68020 CPU, 4 MB RAM (minimum).
  - AmigaOS 4.x / MorphOS: PowerPC.
  - AROS:                 i386, ARM (RasPi 1-3) or x86-64.

Needed assigns: ENV: and T:

Optional, for archives:

  - lha and lzx commands in C: (for LHA/LZX read AND write).
    On AROS the bundled lha is incompatible - use the xad path instead.
  - An installed xadmaster.library to read many additional archive formats
    (read-only).


Installing and starting
=======================

  1. Copy the MCAmiga executable and its MCAmiga.info icon anywhere you like.
  2. Double-click the icon from Workbench, or run MCAmiga from a Shell.
  3. Optionally copy the shell helper scripts mc, mcview, mcdiff to C: and make
     them executable (these are Amiga shell scripts, NOT POSIX):

        protect c:mc swerd

     After that you can simply type "mc" to launch the manager, "mcview <file>"
     to open the viewer, or "mcdiff <a> <b>" to compare two files.

If the font looks too large, set the environment variable
FPC_VIDEO_BUILTINFONT to vga8 and restart:

        echo vga8 >env:FPC_VIDEO_BUILTINFONT

To make it permanent, create the same variable in ENVARC:. You can also cycle
font sizes at runtime with Ctrl+F1.


Feature overview
================

  - Dual-panel browsing of directories, devices/volumes/assigns, and archives.
  - Three listing formats - Brief (names only), Full (name + size), Long
    (name + size + date + protection flags).
  - Three panel view modes - normal List, Info (shows details of the other
    panel's selected item), and a directory Tree.
  - File operations - copy, copy-as (to a typed name), move, rename, make
    directory, delete (with or without confirmation), recursively over
    multiple selected items.
  - Flexible selection - by key, by range (Shift+Up/Down), and by wildcard
    pattern (+ to select, - to deselect).
  - Sorting - by name, extension, size or date, ascending or descending; via
    hotkeys or a sort dialog.
  - Per-panel file-name filter (e.g. #?.txt).
  - Directory size scan to total up a folder's contents.
  - Quick view - a fast, paged, full-window text peek without launching the
    full viewer.
  - Built-in text and hex viewer with search, search-again, jump-to-line /
    address, word-wrap and a basic syntax highlighter for .ini / patch / diff
    files.
  - External viewer/editor support - up to two of each, configurable.
  - Side-by-side file comparison (diff) using a Myers-algorithm engine.
  - Directory comparison - marks files that differ or are missing between the
    two panels, ready for a one-key copy.
  - Archive support - browse/copy/move/rename/view/edit inside LHA and LZX
    archives; read many more formats through xadmaster.library; pack selected
    items to LHA/LZX; extract.
  - Run executables directly (wait or don't-wait), with a configurable stack
    size.
  - File find - recursive, name and content search, with case-sensitivity
    options.
  - Quick name search - type the start of a name to jump to it.
  - Properties dialog and protection-bit editor (hsparwed).
  - Directory history - jump back to recently visited directories.
  - MC-style pull-down menu across Left / File / Command / Options / Right.
  - Fullscreen (own screen) <-> window toggle, font-size cycling, runtime
    clock toggle.
  - Mouse control and Workbench drag-and-drop (AppWindow / icon drop).
  - Persistent settings saved back into the program icon's tooltypes.
  - Optional logging for troubleshooting.
  - Amiga-aware niceties - optional automatic handling of .info icon files
    alongside their parent file, optional automatic drawer-icon creation,
    configurable default Shell, CP437 / German-umlaut text rendering.


Complete keyboard reference
===========================

See in readme file inside archive or via F1 button in application


Archives
========

MCAmiga treats archives like directories - enter one with Enter and the panel
shows its contents.

  - LHA / LZX - full read/write by shelling out to C:lha / C:lzx. Inside these
    archives you can browse, copy, move, rename, view and edit.
  - xadmaster.library - read-only access to the many formats xad supports
    (browse, view and extract). When several handlers claim a file, the one
    with the highest priority wins.
  - Pack (Alt+F5) - compress the selected items into an LHA archive (LZX is
    available from the Tools menu).
  - Unpack (Alt+F6) - once you've entered an archive, select files and press
    Alt+F6 to extract them to the destination panel. (Extracting whole
    archives is also available from the Tools menu.)

If pressing Enter on a .lha/.lzx seems to do nothing, the required lha/lzx
command is probably missing from C: - MCAmiga surfaces this with a pop-up and
a log entry.


License and credits
===================

MCAmiga is multi-licensed: the application's own code is public domain, but it
bundles one third-party source file and links external Amiga libraries that
keep their own terms.

Credits
-------

  - Original author: alb42 - https://github.com/alb42/MCAmiga
  - Diff engine: Angus Johnson's TDiff (Myers algorithm), Diff.pas
  - MCAmiga - X-Phile Edition (1.1) adds the additional features and tooling
    described above.


Version history
===============

MCAmiga - X-Phile Edition 1.1
  Additions on top of the 0.9 origin release:
  - MC-style pull-down menu bar (F9 / Alt+F10): Left, File, Command, Options,
    Right groups, with a live modifier-row bottom menu.
  - Quick view (Alt+F3): full-window paged text preview with page X/Y count,
    Home/End page jumps and a scrollbar.
  - Directory history (Alt+F8) and a selectable-list dialog.
  - Sort modes (Ctrl+F3 name, Ctrl+F4 ext, Ctrl+F5 size, Ctrl+F6 date) plus a
    Sort order dialog; per-panel file-name Filter.
  - Listing formats (Brief/Full/Long) and Info / Tree view modes.
  - Properties dialog (Ctrl+P) and protection-bit editor (Ctrl+T).
  - Directory comparison (Alt+F9); Pack (Alt+F5) and Unpack (Alt+F6) wiring.
  - .info / hidden-file display toggles (Ctrl+F7, Ctrl+F8).
  - Edit tooltypes (Ctrl+E); Save setup (Shift+F1) and Save tooltypes
    (Shift+F2).
  - Fullscreen <-> window toggle (Ctrl+W) preserving window position/size,
    font-size cycling (Ctrl+F1), runtime clock toggle (Ctrl+F2).
  - Richer in-program Help, command-line -fullscreen flag, optional debug log.
  - AmigaOS 4 build fix and a reproducible multi-architecture build/packaging
    path (m68000, m68020, AmigaOS 4 PPC, MorphOS PPC).
  - Many smaller refinements and bug fixes.

1.0
  - faster redrawing (define area of screen to update, new FPC feature, needs
    latest FPC)
  - clock with seconds (possible because of faster redrawing)
  - RUNSTACK tooltype to set stack size for starting external programs

0.9  (origin of the X-Phile Edition)
  - difference viewer in tools menu
  - basic highlighter for ini, patch/diff files
  - bugfix for start from WBDock2
  - startup scripts to directly start the viewer/diffviewer from shell
  - bugfix for file size