WebRSH: Help: File Manager:
The file manager (FM) is in many senses the heart of WebRSH. Most file related operations, including those accessible through the 'LAUNCH' and 'GET' main form menu items, are accessible also through FM. Most operations should be straight forward. They usually require selecting a file or a directory, and then clicking the appropriate button for the desired action.

FM's interface includes the following elements:

  1. The name of the current working directory along with a link to the parent directory. The link is provided by the Up image to the left of the working directory's name.

  2. The file selection window. Directories are listed first and are distinguished from files by having a backward slash ("\") preceding their names. Each of the lists (directories and files) is internally arranged in alphabetical order. The two lists are separated by a horizontal line which serves a double purpose: The size of the file selection window can be set in the "General Preferences" option setting form.

  3. A set of buttons to perform various file manager operations. The 'Open', 'Cut', 'Copy', 'Paste', 'Delete', 'Rename', and 'New' buttons perform similarly to what the corresponding operations would do in explorer (see some specific remarks below). Note, in particular, that 'Open', when applied to files, would LAUNCH them (=execute them or their associated executables) on the the remote host (=the server machine). The 'Properties' button provides the output of the DOS 'dir' command for the corresponding object trailed by a small form that shows (and can be used to change) file attributes. All of the above mentioned buttons are relevant to both files and directories. The 'Edit' button opens the selected file (or a blank file, if the file selection is null) in WebRSH's text editor. This button can't be used for directories. The 'GET', 'GET as TEXT', and 'GET as BIN' buttons are used for file retrieval, namely, they would send the selected file to the client (and they can't be used for directories). These three options provide the same functionality that the corresponding 'rshget', 'rshgettxt', and 'rshgetbin' commands provide from the command line. They differ from each other by the MIME type reported to the client and by the capability of 'GET as TEXT' to optionally convert the file to a "UNIX-format" text file (this is determined by the appropriate option in the "General Preferences" option setting form). The same file retrieval options can also be provided as "downloadable links" from the 'GET' main form menu item.

The following further remarks are worth noting:

  1. The 'Delete' function is very forceful. It would prompt the user once for confirmation, after which it will do its best to delete the appropriate file or directory. Read-Only attributes are ignored. The only thing that might (and should) cause file deletion to fail is insufficient NTFS permissions (only relevant to NTFS partitions on NT machines). File deletion is FINAL: files are NOT moved to the recycle bin.

  2. The 'Cut'/'Paste', 'Copy', 'Rename', and 'New' functions are more delicately behaved in the following sense:

  3. The 'Cut', 'Copy', and 'Paste' commands, use a special clipboard implementation. This WebRSH clipboard is disjoint from the Windows clipboard and can only be used to store file/directory names along with the appropriate command option (either 'Cut' or 'Copy'). While most WebRSH properties (e.g., the working directory) are stored as form fields, and thus depend only on the form from which a command is being issued; WebRSH clipboard information is stored on the disk of the host computer (specifically, in the inidat.txt file in the configuration directory), and is thus shared among different WebRSH forms. This is done to enable cut/paste operations between different browser windows.

    As soon as the clipboard is not empty (following a 'Cut' or 'Copy' operation), a small form is being appended to FM forms. It shows the clipboard content, and provides an option to empty the clipboard ('Cancel') and an option to paste its content ('Paste as'). The default paste location is the current working directory. It can be changed manually in the appropriate field following the 'Paste as' button.

    Another way to paste the clipboard content is to use the 'Paste' button below the file selection window. This would always paste the current content of the clipboard in the current working directory (of the form where the 'Paste' button is clicked). Note that the 'Paste' button would paste the clipboard content even if the clipboard form is not appended. The clipboard content may be altered from another browser window, or, in principle, by another user from another computer (this is one of the reasons that different users should use different configuration setups of WebRSH). The 'Paste' button always responds to the current content regardless of its source. It is possible to have WebRSH open in two browser windows with different working directories, and to cut (or copy) a file in one of these windows and then immediately paste it in the other.