How-Tos
How
do I archive a CD/hard drive/any folder using MJ's CD
Archiver? First either (a) go to menu “Action”
-> “Archive”, (b) press keys “CTRL”
“a” simultaneously in either left pane or right pane,
(c) on toolbar, press the button whose tooltip is “Select a
CD/folder to archive”. Then simply browse your computer to
choose the drive/folder you want to archive. After archive is
finished, you might want to change the name of the newly archived
folder to an easy-to-remember name following the instruction
here.
I
already archived my hard drive, how do I update the content of a
folder, like c:\windows (or /usr)? First in the left
pane tree view find the folder you want to update, select it,
then either (a) go to menu “Action” -> “Update”,
(b) press keys “CTRL” “u” simultaneously
in either left pane or right pane, (c) on toolbar, press the
button whose tooltip is “Update content of a CD/folder”
(the icon is a colored version of the archive icon), (d) right
click on the selected folder and choose “update” from
the popup menu. Then updating will begin. Note that you can
set up automatic update of the archive file as described
here. Please also note that once you
updated a folder, all the search results involving this folder
should be updated as well (as described below)
because the folder contents might have changed, rendering the
previous search results obsolete.
I performed a search before, how do I perform the search
again (after updating the content of a folder)? Instead
of setting all options again and do another search, a quicker way
can be taken if the results of previous search still exists in
the left pane tree view. If so, just select the previous search
result you want to update, then update it as described above.
How do I use this as a
Windows search replacement? First of all, this
software is intended for archiving data CD/DVD and hard drives
for searching data, but it is not real-time search. Therefore it
cannot be a true replacement for Windows search functionality.
However, if you are like me and get really frustrated with
Windows search due to its snail-like speed and pathetic search
options, then I would suggest to set up MCA to replace Windows
search as follows: First, archive the hard
drives you have. Then set up automatic update of the archive file
as described here. Finally, note that
you could also perform a search and update
that search with one mouse click later, on updated hard drive
info. Also if you need real-time file search and know which
folders might be changed since the last time the archive was
updated, then you could always just update
those folders quickly and perform search. So MCA can reasonably
replace Windows search by providing quite up-to-date stats (or
real-time stats if you choose to update before search, which
could save much time if you need to perform several searches,
which is what usually happens when you search files on hard
drive). Additionally, MCA's speed, advanced search options,
one-click update of previously performed search, and search of
archived CD/DVDs (a major MCA function) transcends what Windows
file search could ever provide.
How
do I rename an archived folder or search results? First
select the folder in the left pane, then either (a) go to menu
“Action” -> “Rename”, (b) press keys
“CTRL” “r” simultaneously in either left
pane or right pane, (c) on toolbar, press the button whose
tooltip is “Rename selected folder”, (d) right click
on the selected folder and choose “Rename” from the
popup menu. The selected folder will change color and prompt you
to type in new name. Just begin typing new name. After you
finished typing, simply click anywhere else to finalize the new
name, or press the “Esc” key to cancel change. Please
note that you can only change root folder's name because renaming
other folders are not needed by most users.
How do I change a
renamed archived folder back to default name? First
select the folder in the left pane, then either (a) go to menu
“Action” -> “Revert Name”, (b) on
toolbar, press the button whose tooltip is “Restore the
name of the selected CD/folder to original name” (c) right
click on the selected folder and choose “Revert Name”
from the popup menu. That's it.
How
do I setup automatic update of my hard drive (or a folder)? On
Windows: First step, under the directory where you installed
MCA, there is a MS-DOS batch file named “example.bat”.
Open with a text editor like Notepad. In the batch file after the
comments (marked by “:”), there is a line
like: javaw.exe
-Djava.library.path="C:\Program Files\MCA" -classpath
"C:\Program Files\MCA" -jar "C:\Program
Files\MCA"\MCA.jar -d "C:\Program Files\MCA"
"C:\WINDOWS" "C:\Program
Files\MCA"\myarchive.mca Basically in the
line above only the last two strings would concern user:
"C:\WINDOWS" is the folder to be automatically updated,
while "C:\Program Files\MCA"\myarchive.mca is the
archive file the update is stored in. So change these two strings
to what you would like using notepad, then save the file to a
different name like “myupdate.bat”. Please
note that you should ALWAYS save the “example.bat”
under a different name after you modified it! Otherwise a future
MCA update will overwrite it. Second step, go to
“Start”->”Programs”->”Accessories”->”System
Tools”->”Scheduled Tasks”->”Add
Scheduled Task”, this would launch the windows scheduled
task dialog. Following the on screen instructions (when choosing
program to run, choose “browse” and find the
myupdate.bat, which is likely under “C:\Program
Files\MCA” . Then simply set up the frequency
you want the myupdate.bat batch file (after your modification of
course) to be run. On Unix/Linux: Assuming you
installed MCA in “/home/users/myname/mca”, you want
to regularly update folder “/home”, and the archive
file to contain the folder content is at
“/home/users/myname/myhome.mca”, then the command for
your crontab
facility (man
page) would be: java
-Djava.library.path="/home/users/myname/mca" -classpath
"/home/users/myname/mca" -jar
"/home/users/myname/mca/MCA.jar” -d
"/home/users/myname/mca" "/home"
"/home/users/myname/myhome.mca” Please
note that the folder you want to update should exist, otherwise a
warning will be given. Ideally the archive file the update is to
be stored also should exist, otherwise a new archive file will be
created at the given location. Ideally the folder to be updated
should exist in the archive file too, otherwise a new root folder
will be created in the archive file for the folder to be updated.
While automatic archiving is undergoing, it can be cancelled by
user too.
How
do I search for a file in my archive? If you want to
search the whole archive (except for the previous search
results), make sure you uncheck the “search selected folder
only” option (note that this option is overridden by method
(d) below). If you want to search previous search results to
filter them further, you need to check the “search selected
folder only” option and select the search results or
archived root folders that you want to search (Note that you can
select multiple folders to search by pressing “shift”
or “ctrl” key while you click with mouse). Search
options can be set in the search form at the bottom of left pane,
and advanced search options can be set by pressing the “Advanced
Options” button - set the filters and options in the popup
menu, then press the “Set Options” button to save
these options. To start search, either (a) go to menu “Action”
-> “Search”, (b) press keys “CTRL” “f”
(for “find”, as CTRL-S is reserved for saving archive
file) simultaneously in either left pane or right pane, (c) on
toolbar, press the button whose tooltip is “Search the
current archive”, (d) right click on the selected folder
and choose “Search” from the popup menu. The search
results will be instantly displayed in the left panel tree view
as a new root folder. This root folder can be browsed as normal
folders, but deletion is disabled. All the statistics are also
summarized for search results on the status bar. At the same
time, the tree view will be highlighted with the results from the
currently selected search result folder to enable user get a
feeling of how search results are distributed and quickly find
the found file/folders. Note about the coloring of the
highlight: a dark blue folder icon means there is a file/folder
directly under the highlighted folder that is a search hit
meeting your search criteria; a light blue folder icon means
there is a file/folder somewhere down the directory tree (but not
directly under the highlighted folder) that is a search hit; a
yellow background on the file/folder name indicates that this
file/folder name matches the keyword given. Please
note that the method (d) above (using the
context-sensitive popup menu) would by default search only the
folders selected, even if you did not choose “search
selected folder only” in the search form. This gives a
quick shortcut for searching only a few folders you are
interested in. However, by design methods (a) to (c) do not
override the “search selected folder only” setting,
meaning that they search in only the selected folders whenever
“search selected folder only” was checked, but search
in all folders when “search selected folder only” was
unchecked.
My search
yielded a result I like, how do I find this file/folder
quickly? If you want to launch the search
result file/folder in its associated application or file manager
(like Windows Explorer) check here and
here. If instead you only plan to
find this file/folder in MCA, then you could either (a) go to
menu “Action” -> “Expand Tree for
File/Folder”, (b) press keys “CTRL” “e”,
(c) on toolbar, press the button whose tooltip is “Expand
file tree to show the ...”, (d) right click on the selected
file/folder and choose “Expand Tree for File/Folder”
from the popup menu. The file tree in the left pane will be
expanded to the correct location to display the search result.
My search yieled
hundreds of results, I want to further filter it with another
keyword, how to do it? Check the “search
selected folder only” option in the search form at the
bottom of left pane, then select the search result folder in the
tree view in left pane (Note that you can select multiple folders
to search by pressing “shift” or “ctrl”
key while you click with mouse), set the options/keywords that
you want to further filter with, then start search as described
above.
How do I view the
search options used in a previous search? First
choose the search result root you want to view options for, then
either (a) go to menu “Action” -> “View
search options”, (b) press keys “CTRL” “v”,
(c) just double click on the search result root, (d) right click
on the selected file/folder and choose “View search
options” from the popup menu. Simply in the treeview in
left pane, double click on the search name. This will bring up a
popup dialog displaying all options used to generate the search
results, including which folders were searched.
How do I read the
statistics on the status bar at the bottom of MCA? The
left part of the status bar summarizes the stats for the
currently selected folder. The summary is in the form of “2
files, 5 folders, this 4-level tree contains 15 subfolders and
148 files”, which means that the currently selected folder
contains 2 files and 5 subfolders, which in term contains other
files and subfolders. When all the files/subfolders under the
currently selected folder or any of its subfolders (or subfolders
of subfolders, and so on...) are added together, there are 148
files and 15 subfolders (If you right click the folder in Windows
explorer and choose “properties”, you'll see the same
statistics). The right part of the status bar summarizes the
total size of selected files and folders. When there is only one
file/folder selected, the file size displayed would be the same
as displayed by Windows explorer -> “properties”.
How
do I delete a file/folder? Files and folders can be
deleted in both left pane (tree view) and right pane (folder
contents view). Simply choose the files/folders that you want to
delete and either (a) go to menu “Action” ->
“Delete”, (b) press keys “CTRL” “d”
simultaneously in either left pane or right pane, (c) on toolbar,
press the button whose tooltip is “Delete the selected
directory” (d) press the “Delete” key on
keyboard, to delete the files/folders, (e) right click on the
selected folder and choose “Delete” from the popup
menu. Please note that once a file/folder is deleted, it
cannot be recovered. However, you can update
the parent folder again to get the deleted information back, if
the deleted file/folder still exist on your drive. Please
also note that you cannot delete any file/folder under search
results. Instead, if you need to delete those file/folders,
please browse the non-search-result root folders in archive to
find those file/folders and delete there.
How
do I sort the folders displayed in the tree view in left
pane? Right click in a blank area in the tree view
and choose “Sort By” from the popup menu. Then just
click on the sort option that you want. One note is that due to
the relatively large number of sort options (4 right now, and
could grow in the future) I decided to only add this sort option
to a submenu of the context-sensitive menu and not to main menu,
keyboard shortcuts and toolbar, to save space.
How do I delete search
result(s)? Search results can be deleted the same way
any folder is deleted. Additionally, one
could go to either (a) go to menu “Action” ->
“Clear search results”, (b) press keys “CTRL”
“c” simultaneously in either left pane or right pane,
(c) on toolbar, press the button whose tooltip is “Remove
the search results (keep only the real folder/files)”, (d)
right click on a blank area and choose “Clear search
results” from the popup menu. Note that this option would
delete ALL of the previous search results!
How
to open a file in MCA to view them in their associated
applications? To open a text file displayed
in MCA to view the text content (or any file with an associated
application such as image files, pdf, word document etc.), one
could (a) go to menu “Action” -> “Launch
file/folder”, (b) press keys “CTRL” “l”
simultaneously in either left pane or right pane, (c) on toolbar,
press the button whose tooltip is “Launch selected file or
expand selected folder”, (d) right click on the selected
file/folder and choose “Launch file/folder” from the
popup menu. Note that this option would open folder for viewing
in your file manager (Explorer on Windows) if the selected is a
folder not a file!
How
to open a folder in MCA to view them in my file manager (Explorer
on Windows)? To open a folder for viewing in Windows
Explorer etc., one could (a) go to menu “Action” ->
“Launch file/folder”, (b) press keys “CTRL”
“l” simultaneously in either left pane or right pane,
(c) on toolbar, press the button whose tooltip is “Launch
selected file or expand selected folder”, (d) right click
on the selected file/folder and choose “Launch file/folder”
from the popup menu. Note that this option would open file for
viewing in its associated application if the selected is a file
not a folder!
How do I use regular
expressio to search? Please read the Regular
Expression section.
How do I clear all the
search result highlights? Go to either (a) go to menu
“Action” -> “No highlights”, (b) press
keys “CTRL” “h” simultaneously in either
left pane or right pane, (c) on toolbar, press the button whose
tooltip is “Clear the highlight of the folders and files
found by search”, (d) right click on a blank area and
choose “No highlights” from the popup menu. Note
that this option only temporarily disable the highlighting of
current search result display. After clearning the highlight, if
you go to another search results or select current search results
again, the search result hits for each search will be correctly
highlighted again to enable quick finding of search hits.
How to do full text
search, mp3 file information or CDDB information for my CDs?
Currently they are not supported. We have different plans for
each feature regarding to potential support in the future. See
Question & Answers section for details.
How do I contact
support if I have a question/bug report? Support for
MCA is provided through email. We do ask that if you have a
question, please first try to read the documentation thoroughly
(Don't forget you can also search MCA documentation). If your
question is still not answered, please email to
mingyiliu@yahoo.com Please
write as precisely as possible what is your question and if it is
a bug, what is the error message and how did you get the bug, so
that I can fully understand and/or reproduce bugs/problems.
How do I
register? Please read the Registration
section on how to obtain a registration key. Then go to menu
“Help” -> “Registration” and enter
your username and registration key.
How can I read .chm
files on Linux or other Operating Systems? For
reading .chm files on Linux, Unix variants including Solaris,
*BSD, even Mac OS X, use xChm,
the best one I found on Linux. For Mac OS X, you can also
consider using chmox.
With
MCA, how do I find out what Operation System I am using? Assuming
that one luckily installed MCA successfully without knowing the
OS used, one could also find it out by going to MCA's menu
“Help”->”about” which displays both
the operating system and java installation version and path.
With
MCA, how do I find out the Java version I am using? Assuming
that your Java version supports MCA, pleases go to MCA's menu
“Help”->”about” which displays both
the operating system and java installation version and path.
How
do I launch MCA from command line? First,
for Windows users, it is recommended that you enable “shell
integration” during MCA installation process, which allows
you access to all command line options MCA supports through
Windows Explorer context sensitive menu. Second, for
other operating systems, the command line syntax for MCA is
(let's assume java path is {java}, the folder containing MCA.jar
is {app}):
To archive a folder with path
denoted by {folder}: {java} -Djava.library.path="{app}"
-classpath "{app}" -jar "{app}\MCA.jar" -a
"{app}" "{folder}"
To open an MCA archive file
denoted by {file}: {java} -Djava.library.path="{app}"
-classpath "{app}" -jar "{app}\MCA.jar" -f
"{app}" "{file}"
To archive a folder with path
denoted by {folder} into the last used MCA file: {java}
-Djava.library.path="{app}" -classpath "{app}"
-jar "{app}\MCA.jar" -b "{app}" "{folder}"
To update a folder
already archived in the last used MCA file (assuming folder path
is denoted by {folder}): {java} -Djava.library.path="{app}"
-classpath "{app}" -jar "{app}\MCA.jar" -c
"{app}" "{folder}"
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