APPLEWORKS & MULTIRAM | 4.7 |
The sizes AppleWorks will report for files greater then 255K will be incorrect.
Figure 4.1 shows a catalog of a ProDOS hard disk subdirectory with one AppleWorks file “SAMPLE” in the directory. ProDOS reports the size of a file in blocks. A block is 512 bytes or 1/2 of 1K. Therefore the size of the file is 621 blocks divided by 2 or 310K.
The sase file when cataloged by AppleWorks shows 53K on disk end 67K when loaded onto the Desktop as Figures 4.2 and 4.3 show.
The reason for the discrepancy is that AppleWorks was not designed for files larger than 255K. the upper limit a single byte can indicate. A future modification to AppleWorks may be possible to correct this problem.
To tell how big a file is when saved on floppy disk is easy; an Apple 5 1/4 inch floppy can hold only 136K and a large file must be split over several disks. Count the number of disks the file spans and you can easily approximate its true size.
To tell how big a file is on hard disk is more difficult. When you save a file to a hard disk, you may wish to add the real size to the file name to avoid later confusion . From ProDOS, after exiting AppleWorks, catalog the AppleWorks files subdirectory, get the file’s block count, divide by two, and rename the file with the results. At minimum, you should at least add some indicator to the file’s name to inform you that the file is larger than 255K.
If you know a file is larger than 255K on disk, add 256 to the file size shown, and the result should approximately equal the right size. In our example. 53K plus 256K equals 309K, approximately the 310K determined earlier.
When a large file is loaded to the desktop, as Figure 4.3 shows, AppleWorks will continue to show an incorrect size. The size will always be larger then the size shown on disk as AppleWorks uses a compaction scheme when it saves files to disk. If the amount of space remaining on the desktop is small and the file on the desktop also shows a small size, you will need to add 256K to the file size to get a correct size.
The available space shown remaining on the Desktop is always accurate. The size of the large file shown on the Desktop, corrected by 256K, and the amount shown remaining on the Desktop may not equal the original empty Desktop, however. Every record/row of a file has some unusable bytes associated with it. The larger the number of records or rows in a file, therefore, the larger the discrepancy. Most certainly, you will not be able to load a file that is larger than the amount shown remaining on the desktop.
BenchmarksFollowing are sample values describing some of the time requirements or capacities for certain operations in AppleWorks. Because of the many variables involved, some values will very significantly in different test situations.