What the press wrote

Boronia boy is king of the file managers

On the webpage at Zedtek Inc, an unintentional shrine to corporate wrong-headedness, the latest number is up. "New world record," it says, "4,498,178 logged files on a single drive!

It is the sort of information users of Zedtek's programs ZTree Win and ZTree Bold - among them companies such as IBM, Exxon, Boeing, Philips, Motorola, American Express and J.P. Morgan, to say nothing of NASA - love to share.

A $US30 shareware program that has the look and feel of the $220 XTree Gold file manager - one of the DOS world's most loved programs - ZTree Win does not have customers. It has paying fans.

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Bleeding Edge

XTree might have remained XTinct, had it not been for Kim G. Henkel, a boy from Boronia, who produced and markets a shareware XTree look-alike called ZTree Win (http://www.ztree.com). It's a full 32-bit program, handles long filenames, has no apparent memory limitations, having logged more than 4 million files on a single hard drive, and provided you're prepared to spend a little time configuring it and learning its simple command structure, will allow you to keep your head above the data soup.

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Genuinely Interesting Software Dept:. I've long lamented the death of XTree, the DOS-based file management utility. That is, until I discovered ZTree, an XTree clone developed by Kim Henkel at Zedtek. He's fixed all the problems with a complete ground-up recode. It can now handle long filenames and organize a million files!

“There has never been anything close to it for ease of use and versatility.”

“ZTree's as good as it gets. This program works with Windows 95, 98 and NT and there's even an OS/2 version!

Well, a fellow named Kim G. Henkel thought that it was not fair that the many old, diehard fans of XtreeGold should be left in the lurch. He saw a need, and a market, and went after that niche.

Using the legendary XtreeGold interface as a guide, he coded ZtreeWin from scratch, in 32-bit code (this is what Windows 95, 98, ME, NT and XP are using).

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ZtreeWin is a born-again XtreeGold! The main differences are that it can now use all the memory you have, to log-up more files and more drives, and it can handle long filenames, making it compatible with all versions of Windows from Win95 up to WinXP.

The current "record" for number of files logged, on a single hard drive, with ZtreeWin, is 4,498,178. I have personally logged 19 hard drives, comprising 22 partitions, with 572, 598 files, totaling 488.7 gigabytes, across three machines on a network.

For old dos hounds however, especially those with experience with the older XTree Gold, and with a higher level of comfort with this dos based program, this neat file manager may provide some features that are either not in Windows, or are more quickly controlled in this program.

ZTreeWin has been developed to provide all the powerful functionality of the past, while avoiding all the DOS imposed limitations, and is a useful utility for users skilled in dos commands.

There are several shareware products which could improve your navigation of Windows files. The first we will look at is ZtreeWin (www.ztree.com/ US$30). This program is designed to appeal to users who liked the look and feel of the original and once-popular DOS file-management utilities, which improved upon the text commands typically used in DOS.

ZtreeWin will be familiar to users of the original XTreeGold file manager for DOS, many of whom found moving to Windows Explorer was actually clumsier for them then their beloved DOS file manager.

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Running in a DOS window, ZtreeWin gives you an XTree-type interface in a true 32-bit Windows application that supports newer file-system features.

For example, as a 32-bit application, ZTreeWin can handle long file names, is not constrained by 640 KB of memory (it can handle single drives with more than a million files), and supports archiving software such as ZIP utilities.

Using ZtreeWin, you can perform most actions expected of a file-management utility - copying, moving and deleting files; editing; the ability to launch applications; and viewing file content.

There even is some backwards compatibility, including limited ability to use XtreeGold modules.

ZTreeWin, $30

The buying spree that placed the Norton Utilities under Symantec’s corporate umbrella also gave that company control over XTree. For a while, speculation arose in the computer community about Symantec’s plans for that much-loved program. The company’s decision to retire it evoked shock and dismay - quickly reduced by the fact that the DOS-based program still functioned perfectly well under Windows 3.x.

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However, when these XTree die-hards tried to use the program in Windows 95, they found its inability to cope with long file names was but one problem unlikely to be solved. The release of Windows 95B, with it’s FAT32 file system, appeared to be the last nail in XTree’s coffin - the old DOS app just couldn’t keep up. Things looked bleak indeed, until one of XTree’s legions of fans, Kim G. Henkel, took matters into his own hands. He decided to use as a model the original program’s interface and feature set, and - from scratch - write a new version that would be compatible with both FAT32 and NTFS.

The result, called ZTreeWin, is a stable and useful program that’s also a work in progress. It duplicates the XTree look and feel, supports long file and folder names, and in its current version (1.3), provides nearly all of the much-loved features of its predecessor. A text viewer is built in; native format viewing of other file types is supported via downloadable “helper” applications.

Placing a copy of PKZIP into the ZTree folder adds compression and archive-management capability. It’s even possible to take an XTree configuration file and have its settings - color, video format, logging options, etc. - apply to ZTreeWin. Users of the program can subscribe to an e-mail update notification list, and download patches as they become available. These patches generally add new features; once in a while the rare bug is addressed, too. Once the program has been registered, all subsequent upgrades are free.

Although the myriad graphics-based file/document managers can be very useful, we can’t imagine not also having a copy of ZTreeWin on our system. For chores like finding all *.BAK files across all local drives, and deleting them in one quick sequence of keystrokes, nothing’s faster or easier. A version for OS/2, called ZTreeBold, is also available.

Product Spot

The Command-line interface is far from dead. ZTree, as shown in Fig. 1, is a 32-bit clone of a DOS classic, XTree. ZTW runs in a DOS box under Win95 or NT, provides 90% of the functionality of its namesake, and is long filename-aware. Unlike most GUI-based file managers, ZTW fits on a floppy disk, so it meets my criteria for my emergency toolkit disk. The author is Kim G. Henkel, a transplanted Floridian originally from Australia. You can find the trialware version at www.bmtmicro.com or www.gate.net/~khenkel/ztw.htm. The registration fee is $30.

What comes after XTree? ZTREE!

When filenames longer than the DOS 8+3 format became available with Windows 95, the truncated 8+3 version of the name was the only one which could be seen in DOS or 16-bit file management programs, and duplicating and moving files around created problems.

This is why it is strongly recommended that you don’t (under any circumstances) use DOS XTree or any of its later variants - XTPro and XTGold - or Windows 3.11’s File Manager to manipulate files in 95.

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An Australian programmer, living on the east coast of the United States, wrote a new 32-bit file manager fom scratch, using the well liked modus operandi and looks of XTree.

He wrote it for OS/2, and called it ZTreeBold. Colleagues saw it and wanted it, and so it became shareware. That is to say, you can have it and try it for a month without cost.

He subsequently wrote a similar product to run under Windows NT and 95, called ZTreeWin. I have tried both versions and find they work extremely well.

All of the old XTree facilities are there, with several advantages over the 16-bit version. The most noticeable is the fact that you just don’t run out of memory in it. With XTree, you often had to unlog drives in order to complete some operations; not so with ZTree.

ZTree is a 32-bit Win95 program with long filename support. It supports HPFS and NTFS long filenames, as well as Windows 95 names. It has flexible support of any archiving program, present and future.

It does better than the original in several areas: it doesn’t hog the CPU when waiting for keyboard input; it doesn’t get upset by trying to log a device that is in use; open files can be searched and copied. The OS/2 version, ZTreeBold, also handles files’ EAs, and can launch OS./2 programs.