                        CDISO Quick Start
                        =================

Copyright ½ 2000 Claude Labelle & Roger Burrows.  All Rights Reserved.

Introduction
------------
The function of CDISO is to create ISO9660-compatible CDs (ISO9660
is an international standard that describes the internal structure
of the files on a CD).  ISO9660 CDs can be read on more or less any
platform; it's the standard format that ExtenDOS Gold understands.
So you can create CDs that you can read back later on your own system
(e.g. archives or backups) or that you can read on other systems (e.g.
for data transfer, or software distribution).

In addition to the basic ISO9660 specification, CDISO also supports
many extensions, including:

  * multiple sessions
    This allows you to write more than once to the same CD

  * Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol
    This supports the additional features (long filenames, additional
    file attributes) used by MiNT and Unix platforms.

  * Joliet
    This is a Microsoft extension that also supports long filenames.

You should note that the ISO9660 standard has restrictions on the
names of files and folders, and the depth of nested folders.  The only
characters allowed are A-Z, 0-9 and the underbar (_); periods are
allowed in filenames but not in folder names; and the maximum folder
depth is 8.  Also, ISO9660 level 0 (the level 'understood' by e.g.
MS/DOS) only allows 8+3 character filenames (TOS/DOS-style).  Since
these restrictions can be irksome, and since many 'receiving' systems
can read CDs that break these rules, CDISO allows you to create CDs
that are non-standard in various respects (see below under 'General
Options').  If you do so, it's up to you to verify that your planned
'receiving' system can handle the CD you've created.

Creating an ISO9660-compatible CD is a two-step process: first, an
ISO9660 image is created on a hard disk; then the image is written
to a CD-R(W) disk.  The two steps are integrated but do use two
separate programs:

  * CDISO.PRG/CDISO.RSC
    This provides the user interface and also copies the image
    to your CD-R(W)

  * MKISOFS.PRG
    This is called by CDISO to create the ISO9660 image

CDISO.PRG, CDISO.RSC, and MKISOFS.PRG must all reside in the same
directory.


Installing
----------
Copy CDISO.PRG, CDISO.RSC, and MKISOFS.PRG to the same directory.


Running CDISO
-------------
When you start CDISO, you will be presented with a blank window,
called a SESSION, where you can add files or folders (called items
from now on).  Use the + button to add items from the file selector,
or drag items from the desktop onto it (if you have a multitasking
system).  The file selector will reappear every time you add an item,
until you click Cancel.  This allows you to add many items quickly
with the basic file selector.  If you have a file selector that
implements the Boxkite/Selectric extensions, you can select multiple
items and they will all be added at the same time.

Before you start adding items, we suggest that you go to the menu
bar and open the General Options dialog to set the options to use.
Less-frequently needed options are listed in the Advanced Options
dialog.  Both General & Advanced Options are described in detail
at the end of this document.

NOTE: If you have BubbleGEM installed, right-clicking on objects in
any dialog box will display Help bubbles.


More on the SESSION window
--------------------------
One of the basic design features of CDISO is that when you add a
folder (or the 'root' of a drive), just the name itself (which we
call a 'path item') is added to the list of items.  Path items are
identified in the window by an asterisk, and indicate that all files
and folders within the specified path item will be written to the CD.
This applies even if the content changes between the time you add the
path item and the time you write it.

This feature means that, unlike other ISO9660-creation packages, you
can save session "descriptions" that will continue to be valid even
after you add/move/delete files!

The title bar display the actual path on the CD where the items will
be written.

When you click on an item to select it, you will see in the status
line, the source location.  When you double-click on a folder, you
will see the contents of the folder.  At this point you can add more
items to the folder.

Click on the Closer button (upper-left) to move to the parent folder.
Clicking on it at the root will prompt you to close the session.

You can delete items by first selecting them.  Drag down or up to
select or deselect multiple items, or click individually on them.
You can also select all items or none by using the first two buttons
or by using Control-A/Control-Z, or by selecting the appropriate Edit
menu options.  To delete the selected items, click the - (minus)
button.  You can click UNDO to undelete if you made a mistake.

You can cut items and paste them into a different folder.  Click
Control-X to cut the selected items and Control-V to paste them, or
use the appropriate Edit menu options or buttons.

You can create new folders on the CD that don't exist on your hard
disk.  Choose the New Folder option from the Edit menu, or click the
Folder button.  Note that you can give a long name to your folder,
and use lower case letters (of course, these will only be copied to
the output CD if the options in effect at the time allow such items
to be created).

To find out the amount of space required by your selections, click
the Ruler button or Display Size option from the CD menu.  Note:
the space required will vary (somewhat) depending on the options you
select.


Writing a CD
------------
1. Make sure that the ISO9660 options and the Additional Systems
   options in the General Options dialog box are what you want.

2. Open the Drives Options dialog box.  The first time you open it,
   your drives will be scanned in order to determine the one with
   the most space available.  This will be your "Image Drive", where
   the ISO9660 image will be created prior to being written to CD.
   You can also manually choose your Image Drive if you wish.  Note
   that clicking on "Calc" will rescan the drives and select the one
   with the most free space.  When you are actually writing the CD,
   the Image Drive must have enough free space to contain the whole
   image being written.  It will help performance if the Image Drive
   is on a different physical device than the path items.  It will
   also help performance if the Image Drive is not significantly
   fragmented; you may wish to defragment it on a regular basis.

3. Click on Write under the CD menu.  In the resulting dialog box, you
   may enter a volume ID which will be reported as the volume label
   when the CD is subsequently mounted.  You can use A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and
   spaces (spaces will be converted to underscores in the label when
   it is written).

3. Verify that the recording speed is correct.

4. Click on Simulate or Write to start the CD creation process.  As
   noted in the introduction, CD creation is a two step process.
   First, CDISO calls MKISOFS to create the image file on hard disk.
   While MKISOFS is building the image file, you can interrupt it by
   pressing the Esc key; this will cancel recording too.  Once the
   image file has been created, CDISO copies this image to the CD
   (if you have chosen Simulate, no data is actually written, but
   everything else proceeds as though it is).  Then the image file
   is deleted, unless otherwise specified in Advanced Options.
   Finally, a scrollable window is opened that displays the list of
   names changed as a result of your selections in General Options.


The ISO9660 image file
----------------------
Normally, the ISO9660 image file IMAGE.ISO is created and deleted
automatically as part of the process of creating a CD.  But you
can create, use and save this file directly if you wish, as follows:

1. To create an image file for later use (e.g. to create multiple
   identical CDs), click on "Session/Make IMAGE.ISO...".  This
   will perform the same steps as "CD/Write...", except that
   the process will stop after creating the image file.

2. To use an existing image created as above, select "CD/Write..."
   as normal.  If an image file exists in the current image drive,
   information about the image file will be displayed in the Write
   dialog box.  To use that existing image, rather than creating a
   new one, select the box "From ...".  Clicking on the Simulate
   or Write button at this point will bypass image creation, and
   immediately start writing the image to your CD.

3. Normally the IMAGE.ISO file is deleted after it has been written
   to the CD.  This applies whether it was created as part of the
   normal process, or by using the process explained above.  If you
   wish to re-use an image file, you can prevent it from being
   deleted by selecting the "Keep image file" checkbox in the
   Advanced Options dialog.


Miscellaneous notes
-------------------
1. You don't need to verify if you'll have enough space on hard
   disk or CD before writing; the program will ensure that there's
   enough space before it starts writing.
2. Always choose Simulate the first time you use CDISO so that you
   can verify that your system supports the write speed you've chosen.
   You can choose to write after a successful simulation; simulate-
   then-write is significantly quicker than clicking the Simulate
   button then the Write button, since the latter would cause the
   image file to be created twice.


General Options
---------------
The options are in five groups, as follows:

ISO9660
As noted in the introduction, strict ISO9660 compliance restricts the
format of file and folder names.  Non-conforming names will be changed
automatically by the program.  If you want to minimize the changes, we
suggest setting all the options in the ISO9660 box except "Allow 31-
character filenames".  Choose "any" for the non-ISO9660 characters.
The resulting CD will be readable by TOS (with ExtenDOS Gold), but
other platforms may have problems with it.

Note: If you want to see the names that will be changed on CD _before_
you write the CD, you can do the following.  After specifying the
folders and files to be written, click on the Display Size item under
the CD menu.  CDISO will go through all the steps required to create
the Image file, including calculating the space required on a CD,
determining the names that will be changed, and opening a scrollable
window.

WRITE
Here you can set the default speed; whether to keep the IMAGE.ISO file
after writing the CD; and whether the write progress bar will be
updated regularly.

ADDITIONAL SYSTEMS
Here you can select if you want other filesystem information recorded
on the CD in _addition_ to the ISO9660 information.  Should you wish,
you can create a CD with ISO9660, Rock Ridge AND Joliet info on it.

FILE SELECTOR
This controls how the file selector behaves when adding items to
the session window.  Try it and see!

PRE-SETS
These allow you to quickly select combinations of options to provide
CDs suitable for different receiving systems.


Advanced Options
----------------
These are in two groups:

DISC INFORMATION
This allows you to identify various items that will be written as
text to the CD; however, although these are part of the ISO9660
specification, they are rarely used or displayed by systems that
read ISO9660 CDs, so they are often left blank.

MULTI-SESSION
When you create the second or subsequent session on a CD, by default
the previous session is 'merged' with the current one: this means
that when you read the resulting CD, you'll see the data for the
current AND previous session (don't worry, the data isn't copied,
just the filename/folder info).  If you set "Don't include previous
session", then each session will be totally separate, and the only
way to access sessions prior to the last is via the SESSION.CPX
supplied with ExtenDOS Gold.

The standard hardware format for multi-session CDs is XA mode, also
known as mode 2.  Since all CDs that CDISO creates are potentially
multi-session, CDISO creates mode 2 CDs by default.  If you have a
special requirement (for example you're writing a CD to be read on
very old drives that do not support mode 2), you can choose to create
a mode 1 CD instead.  Note that this option is only applicable to the
first session on a CD: when you create a subsequent session it will
always use the same mode as the first session.

Setting the write protect button tells CDISO to 'close' the whole
CD during finalization, after the current session is written.  No
further data can be written to that CD.
