                             DescEdit 2.03 beta
                             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                      Description editor plugin for FAR
         Written by Dmitry Jemerov, 2:5030/654, yole@spb.cityline.ru

                      Release date - 07 Jan 2002

This FAR plugin allows you to use FAR internal editor for editing file
descriptions. It also helps you create new descriptions for files
by providing settings for default descriptions and description
indentation. Another powerful feature is its ability to extract
descriptions from archives, usually stored in file_id.diz.

This plugin is freeware and may be used without any restrictions.
The plugin requires FAR 1.50 beta or higher and has been tested with
FAR 1.70 beta 3.

In order to install the plugin, you should unpack the archive into the
subdirectory Plugins\DescEdit in the main directory of FAR and restart
FAR. After this, the plugin can be invoked by choosing the command
"Description editor" from the plugins menu of FAR. You can create a
macro for running the plugin more quickly.

In the plugin configuration dialog, which is opened by choosing the item
"Description editor" from the "Plugins configuration" menu, the
following options can be configured:

  Description list names     Allows you to specify the names of
                             description files separated with commas.
                             The first existing one will be edited.
                             If none of the files exists, the file
                             with the first name specified will be
                             created.

  Archive description names  Allows you to specify the names of files
                             containing archive descriptions,
                             separated with commas. It is used when
                             the option "Extract descriptions from
                             archives" is set.

  Default description        Allows you to specify the default for
                             new file descriptions. For BBS SysOps:
                             you may enter here a zero download
                             counter (for example, [000]).

                             The default description string may
                             contain the following special tokens:
                             %S - file size;
                             %D - file date (in the format DD-MM-YY);
                             %T - file time (in the format HH:MM).

  Description indent         Allows you to specify the indentation
                             for descriptions. If you leave it empty,
                             the filenames and descriptions will be
                             separated with a single space.

  Long description indent    This option sets the indentation of each
                             line after the first of a long
                             description extracted fron an archive.

  Long description prefix    This option specifies the characters
                             that are added to the beginning of each
                             line after the first of a long
                             description extracted fron an archive.

  Capitalize filenames       If this option is selected, the first
                             letters of filenames for which new
                             descriptions are created will be
                             uppercased.

  Always use short           If this option is selected, short file
  filenames                  names will always be used when creating
                             new descriptions. If it is not checked,
                             the current value of the FAR option
                             "Show long names" is checked to
                             determine whether a short or a long
                             name should be used.

  Extract descriptions from  If this option is selected, the plugin
  archives                   will try to extract the descriptions
                             for archives from the description
                             files they contain (like file_id.diz).
                             DescEdit uses the same archiver
                             configuration and second-level plugins
                             as MultiArc.

  Skip empty lines in long   If this option is selected, the empty
  descriptions               lines in archive description files will
                             not be copied to files.bbs.

  Prompt for description     When this option is enabled and multiple
  file                       description file names are specified in
                             the configuration dialog, a menu is
                             shown every time the plugin is invoked,
                             allowing to specify the description file
                             to be used.

  Path to MultiArc           Here you can specify the path to the
                             MultiArc plugin, if is is not located
                             in the subdirectory of the same
                             directory as the DescEdit plugin.
                             DescEdit uses MultiArc format plugins
                             to extract descriptions from archives.


This is only a beta version of the plugin. It may contain bugs. Please
send bug reports, comments and suggestions to the author (Dmitry
Jemerov, 2:5030/654, yole@spb.cityline.ru).
