Hi there. I'm the developer of the software you're discussing here. I registered some time ago but only come in from time to time.
First of all, thanks to all for the valuable feedback you provided that Chema has been kindly forwarding to me. It helped me to debug the application and make some improvements.
Regarding your questions/comments:
Dbug wrote: ↑Sat May 05, 2018 11:45 am
So, first: If like me you think that installing anything made by Oracle on your computer is a guaranteed way to go to the deepest levels of hell, a solution is to use a portable version of the Java system, nicely sandboxed so no java stuff even knows it's there.
I gave a shot at
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/install-jav ... ash-drive/ and that worked nicely
Nice that it worked for you. I've seen some negative comments here about the fact the application is made in java. One reason was that I know (kind of) the language, but mainly because of its cross-platform nature and wide availability. Technically, I don't think it's more insecure or messy than any other big framework out there. As far as you're not using it to execute applets on a web browser, you should be safe. Main security concerns are related to the sandbox it uses to execute code from a browser, other than that it should be inherently more secure than the average C/C++ application (after all it's managed code).
Dbug wrote: ↑Sat May 05, 2018 11:45 am
I tried the version 0.3 and 0.4 of the Oric DSK Manager, version 0.3 is able to open the DSK I made for my Encounter videos, but version 0.4 just does not seem to do anything at all when I open a DSK.
I attached the file if you want to look at it: Encounter.dsk
It is weird because I just tried to open it using version 0.4 and didn't get any problem. Can you please double check that it's failing for you with version 0.4?. I'm just attaching an screenshot.
Dbug wrote: ↑Sat May 05, 2018 11:45 am
If I can do some remarks:
- Because of the contrast, it's very hard to see the side/track/sector numbers, they are displayed in "dark gray over slightly less dark gray"
I agree it's true when the boxes are disabled. I will try to do something about that, but messing with javafx css is a road of peril. I think they are reasonably readable when the boxes are enabled (see screenshot).
Dbug wrote: ↑Sat May 05, 2018 11:45 am
- Would be nice if the tool remembered the last opened folder
That should be the expected behavior. And I would say that it works for me on OSX. Could you please tell me on which operating system and a concrete use case where it fails?
Dbug wrote: ↑Sat May 05, 2018 11:45 am
- Would be nice to be able to resize the window
This was intentional. I didn't want to fight the layout manager and considered that there was enough room for all the information to display. It's true that when the disk has a lot of small files, you wouldn't be able to see all of them at once, and would need to scroll the disk view. Is this really a big drawback for you?
Dbug wrote: ↑Sat May 05, 2018 11:45 am
- Would be awesome if the tool could generate new DSK from an existing DSK, with different parameters (example: The DSK generated by Tap2CD is a 72 tracks, 17 sectors floppy, that would work on a 3.5" but not a 3" inch... but it's single sided, so technically the same content would fit nicely on a double sided 40 tracks 3" floppy)
Well, this is the reasoning behind this "feature": I wanted to be able to open existing disks without touching their geometry because the application supports internally disks with different track geometries. Additionally, I was thinking about improving it to honor the current bitmap allocation (currently files are reallocated when a DSK is modified and saved again), and so we have two different use cases here:
- Modifying an existing disk, but without touching its geometry or main features. Just adding or removing files. Ideally, the files would be left where they are in the original disk and if some sectors are marked as allocated in the bitmap, keep them in this state, even if they are not linked to an existing file. This is what you get with the menu option "Open dsk...", and once you make this, the boxes to change sides/tracks/sectors get locked.
- Creating a new disk. Here you are free to use the geometry you like and it's the default mode when you open the application. You can add all the files from a given DSK (or TAP or single files) at once by using the option "Merge from..." or by just drag and dropping the file to the file list in the application window. I suppose you can get the behavior you need by adjusting first the geometry of the disk and them drag and dropping the DSK generated by TAP2CD to the application. Another option would be to just drag the TAP to the application directly.
As a side note, files can be also exported by dragging them from the file list and dropping to your desktop (in case it supports drag and drop) and/or by selecting it and using the menu option "Export file...". Take into account that in case the file has meta information defined (load address, executable,...) the file will be written with a header where this information is written. This header is stripped whenever you try to add it to this or another disk. No header will be written if no meta information is defined.
Best regards,
Manuel