CiderPress Requested Features List

In no particular order.  Return to main page.

Main application features:

• Add: "Search" feature to find text and binary strings across multiple disk images and file archives.
• Add: Copy & paste files to and from Windows Explorer windows.
• Add: Drag & drop files between disk images.
• Add: Drag disk images onto CiderPress window to open them.
• Add: "Move file" command (moves files between ProDOS/HFS directories).
• Add: Directory sorting.
• Add: Graphical "blocks in use" disk map.
• Add: Allow choice between list and tree display for file list.
• Add: "Undelete files" command.
• Add: "Revert to original" feature (mass "undo" for all types of files).
• Add: ResEdit-style resource viewer.
• Expand ZIP archive support.
• Add: File compare, a la ProSel-16.

Ideas for tools:

• Add: BinSCII encode/decode.
• Add: Decode "executioner", PAAF, etc.
• Add: ADT server.
• Add: Macintosh-style partitioned image creator (can be used as CD-ROM ".iso" image creator).
• Add: partition & format utilities for CFFA, MicroDrive, and FocusDrive.
• Add: bad block scan.  Useful for .NIB, .APP, and .FDI images, as well as physical media.
• Add: more "bulk tools", e.g. bulk image testing.
• Add: a recursive extraction feature that extracts files from disks in archives on disks.
• Add: "disk zap" to zero out empty blocks (improves disk compression).
• Add: HDV Normalizer, which converts an "expanding" .hdv file into a full-sized file.
• Turn "disk sector viewer" into "disk sector editor".
• Add 6502/65816 code disassembly to sector viewer.
• Volume copier should allow you to have two volumes open at the same time, and copy partitions directly between them.
• Opening a file on a disk image should involve picking a name from a list or tree, not typing it in by hand.
• Add a tool that splits a .NIB disk image into two pieces for SST (needs to reconstruct sync bytes, etc).

Disk image support:

• Add: DDD Deluxe support [need format description or program disassembly].
• Add: Davex archived volume support.
• Add: zero out unused blocks (for better compression).
• Add: support for storage type 4 [embedded Pascal volumes -- need examples].
• Implement writing on CP/M and RDOS disks.
• CP/M user number needs to be visible to user (maybe in place of "type" column).
• Retain 2MG comments when converting 2MG to 2MG.  Convert 2MG comments to NuFX comments and vice-versa.
• Expand DOS Master support to handle arbitrary volumes embedded in ProDOS hard drives.
• Add "delete DOS" and "copy DOS" for DOS 3.3 disks.
• Improve support for DOS files with oversized track/sector lists (e.g. "fastloader" files).
• "Krunch" Pascal disks.
• Convert TXT to PTX when adding files to Pascal disks.  (Might make more sense to convert SRC to PTX, since PTX files were almost always source code.)
• Allow customization of nibble format, for reading sectors from copy-protected .NIB images.
• Allow nibble access to 3.5" disk images.
• Handle non-Macintosh hard drive formats, e.g. Corvus partitioning.
• Handle zip/gzip-compressed images larger than 32MB by expanding into a temp file.
• Recognize Infocom games.  Show the game data portion as a file that can be extracted for use with Windows-based Infocom interpreters.
• Shared file access needs to be disabled, especially on disk images open read-write.  Right now you can run a disk image in an emulator while it's open in CiderPress, which is convenient until the emulator deletes or adds files and CP doesn't know about it.  (CP re-loads the block use map every time it does anything, so the most common forms of nastiness are prevented.)
• Add block-oriented write caching to improve speed on physical media (e.g. multiple-file deletes on a ProDOS 3.5" floppy disk).
• Automatically expand undersized .hdv images.
• Add an option to force writes on a "damaged" or "suspicious" disk image.  Not a good idea, but could come in handy.
• DOS/ProDOS "hybrid" disks (as created with Hybrid.Create on the "Extra K" disk) are supported, but only one part can be accessed at a time.  This should be changed so that both parts can be accessed.
• Provide translation of 13-sector boot block in disk sector viewer.
• Add code to write FDI images (they're currently read-only).
• Add an option to decide whether to convert FDI images to variable-length tracks (which can be converted to .APP) or fixed-length tracks (which can be converted to .NIB).  This needs to happen in the FDI code because the only way to do it reliably for copy-protected disks is to have access to the self-sync information.
• Add support for OS/9 format, for Stellation Mill 6809 card.
• If a disk image isn't recognized, add a "specify disk format" button to the error dialog.  (Currently you have to enable the "specify format" dialog in Edit->Preferences.)
• Correctly identify newly-formatted DOS 3.1 .nib images, which don't have valid sector data fields.

Physical devices:

• Try to detect or prevent media swaps, i.e. ejecting a floppy or CD-ROM and inserting a new one while CiderPress has it open.
• Find a less-noisy way to tell if there's a disk in the floppy drive in Win98.
• After N blocks read without errors, resume bulk reads.  (Currently the disk copier goes to single-block copies after encountering read errors, and stays there, with a 5-6x loss in performance on slower devices.)

Application tweaks:

• Add: Quick-open last N files from list in "File" menu.
• Paste should behave like "add files": the filenames of files being pasted are guaranteed not to clash with other files being pasted, but any conflicts with existing files should be resolved with a rename/overwrite/skip dialog.
• Copying & pasting DOS 3.3 'B' files with "loaders" should work properly.  (When you BRUN a file, DOS uses the embedded length to decide how long the file is.  Some cracked games put a loader in the first part of the file, which then read the sectors out of the rest of the file.  Handling this correctly requires copying all sectors without losing the length embedded in the original.  Current workaround: change type to 'S'.)
• 2MG file comments should be more prominent; perhaps in the Archive Info screen.
• More details should be available on why "damaged" and "suspicious" files are marked as such.
• Printed file list should have indication of "damaged" and "suspicious" files.
• "New -> Disk image" and "convert file to disk archive" should allow formats other than ProDOS-ordered ".po" and DOS-ordered ".do" (e.g. 2MG).
• Make toolbar buttons configurable.
• Put the "..." in the middle of space-shortened file names, rather than at the start or end.
• Add hi-res/double-hi-res palette configuration, so individual colors can be tailored for authenticity with respect to a particular type of display hardware (i.e. NTSC television vs. RGB monitor).
• Sector viewer should have a sliding bar to select offset into disk or file, allowing fast access to arbitrary offsets.
• Allow addition of a Binary II header when creating NuFX archives.
• File copy & paste should copy comments found in NuFX archives.
• Allow text conversion when adding files to NuFX archives (actually a NufxLib change).
• Have a "convert current disk" feature, instead of having to re-open the currently-open disk in the disk image converter.
• Add audio capture to the cassette tape import feature, so that cassette tapes don't have to be captured with a sound editor.
• Cassette import should recognize arrays and shape tables automatically.
• Add audio export feature, converting BAS/INT/BIN to cassette tape format.
• Add syntax checking to BASIC import feature.  Add Integer BASIC support.
• Add a new option to Paste Special: paste the contents of the clipboard into a newly-created text file.  Useful for grabbing text data out of other Windows applications.
• Show compression stats, e.g. total size vs. total compressed size, for NuFX archives.
• Make the NufxLib error log output available.
• Make rVersion and rComment resources more easily visible, perhaps treating them in a fashion similar to NuFX comments.

File viewer and file converters:

• Add: Packed hi-res/DHR (ProDOS $08/4000 and $08/4001 -- never used?).
• Add: Packed hi-res (Beagle Graphics).
• Add: Dreamgrafix PNT/$8005 (and the less-common PIC/$8003).
• Add: AppleWriter.
• Add: Finder icons.
• Add: Sound files.
• Display text in an "Apple II" font.  (There are some Apple II fonts on the web that you can install and use with the file viewer.  CiderPress should include one.)
• Support TimeOut SuperFonts in AWP converter.
• Correctly support tabs in AWP and GWP documents.
• Have option to convert AWP to plain text instead of RTF.  (Can get same effect by cut & pasting into Notepad.)
• Expand files compressed with HardPressed™.
• Applesoft/Integer syntax highlighting could grey-out unreachable lines.
• Have alternate Integer BASIC mode that deciphers the POKEs that conceal BASIC listing in mixed Integer/assembly programs (fairly common in programs from cassettes).
• Add "save as" button to file viewer.
• Add "reverse" conversions, e.g. RTF to AppleWorks, BMP to SHR, etc.
• Add a printer page setup screen that allows configuration of margins.  (Left/right margins are currently configured to deliver exactly 80 columns of 10-point Courier New, in an attempt to match Apple II output.)
• Present "select all" and copy/paste in a menu or as buttons (instead of expecting the user to know about Ctrl-A / Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V).
• Provide a way to view files on a Windows filesystem.
• Don't use a fixed pixel width for the initial size of the file viewer.  On systems with DPI set to 120 the buttons get squished together.
• Make the File Viewer a file editor.  Allow editing of text files and hex dumps.
• Handle Mac documents better. Files on HFS volumes with type TEXT should use the Mac OS Roman converter, and files with type RTF should be presented to the viewer as RTF rather than plain text.

MDC:

• Support multiple output modes (plain text, HTML, XML, CSV, "native" listing that looks like DOS catalog, ProDOS catalog, Pascal list, CP/M dir, etc.)
• Adjust widths of individual fields.
• Show the contents of SHK file archives.
• Open up SHK and ZIP multi-file archives and examine their contents for things that are obviously disk images.