efs-1.6 (beta) available

sandy@ibm550.sissa.it
Fri, 4 Mar 1994 02:49:20 +0100


efs-1.6 (beta) is now available in

Europe: /anonymous@anubis.ethz.ch:sandy/efs/efs-1.6.tar.gz

and

North America: /anonymous@alpha.gnu.ai.mit.edu:efs/efs-1.6.tar.gz

Included is dired-7.0.1.9 (beta). A dired only distribution is available as

   /anonymous@anubis.ethz.ch:sandy/dired/dired-7.0.1.9.tar.gz

This should still be considered to be beta test code.

Changes from 1.5:

dired:

1. Beautified the way dired displays hidden subdirectories -- put a
   blank line between each subdirectory.

2. dired-omit-toggle (C-o), now applies to only the current
   subdirectory.  With a numeric prefix >= 0 it puts the entire buffer
   into omit mode. With a prefix < 0, the entire buffer is taken out
   of omit mode. The "Omit" sign on the modeline applies to the
   subdirectory currently containing the point. The modeline is
   updated with cursor motion commands.  This uses a cache so the
   overhead is actually rather light.  I haven't added support for
   updating the modeline after mouse commands. This should be easy, if
   anybody wants to contribute it.  Just use the function:

   (defun dired-update-mode-line (&optional force)
     "Updates the mode line in dired according to the position of the point.
   Normally this uses a cache of the boundaries of the current subdirectory,
   but if the optional argument FORCE is non-nil, then modeline is always
   updated and the cache is recomputed."

   Give the force arg, if the motion command is such that it
   necessarily (or most likely) changes the current subdirectory.
   Aside from avoiding an unnecessary check of the cache, it also
   is more robust against bad cache.

   If you do use the mouse to change subdirectories now, any cursor
   motion command should update the modeline.

3. dired-do-compress has been rewritten to use the dired-create-files
   interface.  At the user level this means:
    - better failure/success tracking
    - Overwrite prompting if compress program would clobber an
      existing file.
    - With efs, dired-do-compress works asynchronously for remote
      files. 

4. dired-do-compress now gives a more informative confirmation prompt,
   saying exactly what compression/decompression programs it intends
   to use, and on how many files.  The prompt is not hard-coded, but
   is constructed using the dired-compression-method-alist, so it
   should automatically adapt if you add to this alist.

5. Giving dired-do-compress a zero prefix arg allows you to change
   dired-compress-method.  The new method is read with completion
   using the dired-compression-method-alist.  You are not allowed to
   give a compression program not in the alist.

6. The dired file line parser has been fixed to work for file lines
   showing extended security information in the mode string.

efs:

1. efs now has the capability to build a directory listing from a
   cached one with similar switches.  For remote unix hosts, it can
   convert between listings using t, r, X, and S switches, in various
   combinations.  For remote VMS hosts, it can build t and X switch
   listings from VMS DIR output.  For all remote host types, it can
   build nearly every imaginable type of brief directory listing out
   of data in the `efs-files-hashtable'.

   As long as your cache is deep enough, this greatly speeds up
   commands like `dired-sort-toggle'.  If you want to know how much
   caching of explicit listings you're doing, see the variable
   `efs-ls-cache-max'.  File attributes data is cached separately in
   the `efs-files-hashtable'.

   There is a known bug in unix t-switch sorting when the local and
   remote hosts are in different months, because of differing time
   zones.  efs does not currently do timezone tracking of remote
   hosts.  This bug could be easily fixed if internals to do this were
   written.  Someday...

2. efs-dired now does local printing (`dired-do-print') of remote
   files asynchronously.

3. As mentioned above, efs-dired now compresses remote files
   asynchronously. 

4. There is a new command `efs-close-ftp-process'.  It "closes" the FTP
   connection associated with the prompted for buffer.  Closing means
   delete the FTP client process, but retain the *ftp ...* process
   buffer, and all internally cached data for the remote host.  If you
   want to be kind by dropping the connection to an anonymous ftp
   archive for a while, this is better than `efs-kill-ftp-process',
   which wipes the internal cache for the connection.   It will be
   mapped to a key in an efs sub-keymap of dired-mode-map, when I get
   around to it.

   Both efs-kill-ftp-process and efs-close-ftp-process wipe the
   queue of outstanding FTP transactions to be done asynchronously for
   this process.  In this case, you will have to use dired to
   reschedule the commands by hand.  Eventually some facility to allow
   a connection to be killed and restarted, without losing the queue
   may be in the offing.   This would be useful for fixing wedged
   connections.  However, the problem is subtle, as care must be taken
   to ensure that the process does not restart in an inconsistent
   state -- especially tricky when a transaction requires efs to
   manage two FTP connections talking to each other.

5. There is a new command `efs-display-ftp-process-buffer'.  It
   displays the FTP buffer associated with a prompted for buffer.
   This also will be mapped to a key in an efs sub-keymap of
   dired-mode-map, when I get around to it.

6. efs-vm has been upgraded to work with VM 5.56.  It is not backwards
   compatible with older VM's, although I'm not sure exactly at what
   version change it ceases to be compatible.  However, older versions
   of efs-vm, which work with VM 5.3X, are upwards compatible with efs
   1.6.  If I can convince Kyle to add calls to the
   file-name-handler-alist in a few strategic places in VM, efs - VM
   interaction could be made a lot cleaner. VM here refers to the mail
   reader, not IBM's VM/CMS. See efs-cms.el for that.

7. When doing remote to local copies, efs now honours the keep-date
   arg for copy-file.  The _GMT_ modtime of the file is preserved, so
   don't get fooled by timezone changes, when reading the modtime in a
   dired buffer. It works through any sort of gateway.  In dired, you
   can toggle modtime preservation for copy file by giving
   dired-do-copy a zero prefix argument.

8. Bug fixes: In efs-19.el, $'s weren't being correctly quoted by
   read-file-name. In efs-pc.el, some fixes were done to DOS NCSA FTP
   support.  Hope that it now works.  Corny De Souza has fixed up
   efs-mpe.el, after I broke it.  The efs unix ls listing parser has
   been fixed to work for listings showing extended security access
   data in the files mode string.

--sandy