.ionEngine is intended to assist power downloaders with the very important, all-consuming task of sorting all their binaries. This task is especially daunting if you have high bandwidth and lots of hard disk space.
.ionEngine works especially well with Newsbin,
which is an excellent shareware newsreader.
If you don't use newsbin or another program that saves descript.ion files, just make sure to download the .sfv, .csv,.par, and .m3u files along with your binaries.
Then .ionEngine can still help you sift through large numbers of files quickly to decide what to keep, what to trash and what to put on CD.
.ionEngine makes use of 5 standard file types to gather information about your files:
descript.ion files
These are optionally created by Newsbin (in Newsbin options, go to the "file descriptions" tab and click "enable file descriptions", and "log subject"), ACDSee, and some other programs. As implemented by Newsbin, the files can contain the subject line from the usenet post, the poster's name and the date of the post. If you move files around using Windows explorer, your descript.ion file will not be updated to reflect the changes, and all the additional information in the descript.ion entry will be useless. .ionEngine moves the descript.ion records with the files and keeps everything in sync. (ACDsee does this too. If you don't know about ACDSee Classic, it's the best file viewing program available)
.sfv files and .csv files
Many posters upload .sfv or .csv files along with sets of related uploads. These files include a list of all files in the set, so .ionEngine knows that they are all related. The .csv format is not as specific, but people typically put the filename in the first field. If this is the case .ionEngine will read the file
.par , .p0*, .p1* files
.ionEngine uses the file lists embedded in par files to determine which files define a set. If you don't know about .par, (and the client programs Smartpar, and FSRaid) it's the coolest thing to hit usenet in a long time.
.par2 files
Par2 files also have file lists embedded in them. Par2 is even cooler than par version 1. The best client I know of is QuickPar
.m3u files
.ionEngine uses the file lists in m3u files to determine which files define a set.
other file list formats
I would be happy to support other formats, but most of the ones I've looked at are not consistent enough. This is especially true of .nfo files. If you have any formats you think I should support, let me know
This is version 1.6 of .ionEngine. If you have any trouble installing, or find any bugs, please email me at so I can fix it.
Tell me your windows version, the version of .ionEngine, exactly what happened, and if it can be duplicated.
ionEngine is shareware and costs $10.
Although this version of the program is not crippled or limited it does have a very annoying nag screen.
Registered users are registered for all future versions as well.
To register, click below (you must be online).
Be sure to enter a valid email address as it is required to receive your registration key.
Quietsites will not use your email address for any other purpose or give it to anyone else.
If you have allowed .ionEngine to register itself as the default program for filetype .ion,
just double-click on a descript.ion file in windows explorer.
.ionEngine will launch and load that directory into the main grid.
All the subject lines from the descript.ion file and any .sfv, .csv, .par, .pxx, .m3u, files will be read,
so that all files in the directory will be represented in the grid. Any files not represented in a file-list or in the descript.ion file will be labelled "__Orphan__"
Once the grid is loaded, you have the option to do a number of different file-related tasks.
The main program functions are "Auto Move", "Power Move", "Move Selection", "Move Selection to Subdirectory", "Consolidate Subdirectories" and "Delete Selection".
All of these functions except Auto-Move and Consolidate operate on the currently selected files in the main grid. Automove works on the entire
directory, but not on any subdirectories. Consolidate operates on the selected directory and all of its subdirectories.
There are probably lots of effective ways to use this program, but here is what I do:
Download a week or two worth of binaries with Newsbin
Pre-Process the directory
Run mu to extract all the zips and rars
Run smartpar and quickpar on all the parity sets to recover any missing files
Note: Don't delete the .par and par2 files! Keep at least one (the smallest one) from each set so that Auto-Move can figure out what files make up a set
Open .ionEngine by double-clicking the descript.ion file in the download directory
Run Auto-Move. In the new version of ionEngine Automove is much more accurate and gets far fewer false positive matches than in the previous version. This is due to a new default setting "Only Auto-Move Files with File lists". I do not recommend unchecking this setting, but it's there if you want to experiment. Auto-Move by itself is very good at finding groups of files to move together, but its not so great a figuring out good directory names for those sets. Use the feature "Slice and Dice" to get everything nicely named and then click "Go". For my own downloads Auto-Move usually takes care of 2/3 of the files.
Take care of the rest of the files with a combination of "Power-Move", "Move To" and "Move To Subdirectory". Power-Move will be most effective if you've got lots of related sets posted by the same person in a consistent format. That's one reason I let my downloads folder get pretty big before running ionEngine.
Now all my files are sorted nicely into subdirectories of my download directory. I like to move them into a permanent location at this point, which is a manual process.
Power Move
Power move allows you to move groups of related files into multiple directories, based on similarities in their filename, or the subject line. You have to first select a range of related files that have text that you want included in the directory names in the same character positions of either their filenames or the subject lines. For instance, the following list would be an excellent candidate to sort using Power-move: MyScan_number_001_page_00Cover.jpg MyScan_number_001_page_01.jpg MyScan_number_001_page_02.jpg MyScan_number_001_page_03.jpg MyScan_number_002_page_00Cover.jpg MyScan_number_002_page_01.jpg MyScan_number_002_page_02.jpg MyScan_number_002_page_03.jpg
Once you have selected a good range of files and clicked Power-Move, you'll be able to create a directory path pattern by selecting ranges of columns. You can also add extra slashes for nested subdirectories and plain text.
In the example above, I would select the first bolded range ("MyScan"), then add a slash, then select the second bold range ("001"). The result would be to move the first 3 files into "MyScan\001" and the next 3 files into "MyScan\002". (The directories will be created if they don't already exist.)
If you want to get fancy, you can also add plain text to the path pattern, so for instance you could type in "MyCategory" first, add a slash and then do the same thing as before. The result would be files moving into "MyCategory\MyScan\001" and "MyCategory\MyScan\002".
Move
There are two ways to move sets of files into their own directories.
"Move Selection To..." brings up a directory selection window, but
if you want to move files into a subdirectory of the current directory, just type in the name
of the subdirectory into the little text box and click "Move Selection to Subdir:" or hit enter.
This is a very quick way to move a lot of files into multiple directories.
Consolidate
Consolidate subdirectories takes all files in all the subdirectories of the selected directory and moves
them up to the selected directory. Descript.ion file records are also moved.
This function is helpful if, for example you have downloaded similar types of files from several newsgroups. Newsbin sends them to separate directories for each newsgroup,
but since they are all related, you may want to sort them all together. If you consolidate all the subdirectories, you can then work on a
larger list of all your downloaded files at once.
Consolidate is also helpful if you need to reverse an Auto-Move in order to try different settings.
Delete
The Delete function deletes all selected files. Because the recycle bin is very slow, you can optionally select "Permanent Delete" which bypasses the recycle bin.
Auto-Move
Auto-Move is a highly configurable function that analyses all files in the directory, in order to group
related files together and move them into intelligently named subdirectories.
Auto-Move uses the subject lines, the filenames and the other file lists (.csv, .sfv, .par, .m3u) to determine
which files are related. To create the names of the directories, a configurable rule-based macro capability
is included. This allows advanced users to filter out meaningless or irrelevant substrings in the subject lines.
A default set of macro rules is included.
In addition, after the information has been analyzed, you have the option to edit the subdirectory names
that will be created. This is done on the "Preview Results" form, using several commands including
"Replace","Merge / Rename", and "Slice and Dice".
"Slice And Dice" is the most interesting of these and allows you to very quickly change lots of directory names.
Eliminate Re:
(Recommended) Removes "Re:" from the beginning of subject lines so that related lines sort together.
Treat - _ ~ ` = As Word Boundary Characters
(Recommended) This option makes most subsequent text manipulations more effective.
Eliminate Number Related Substrings
Patterns like "File 44 of 56", "Page 1/10", and "570 KBytes" can be removed so that they are not included in the directory names that are created. In version 2, I plan to make these configurable.
For those who are interested, the regex patterns applied are:
(file|files)?( |#)*(\(|\[|<) *\d+ *- *\d+ *(\)|\]|>)?
(file|files)?( |#)*(\(|\[|<)? *\d+ *(\)|\]|>)? *(of|\\|/) *(\(|\[|<)? *\d+ *(\)|\]|>)?
(file|files)?( |#)*(\(|\[|<)? *\d+ *(\)|\]|>)? +o' +(\(|\[|<)? *\d+ *(\)|\]|>)?
\d *(file|files)
(file|files) *\d
\d+(.\d+)? *(pgs|pg|pages)
(pg|pgs|pages)\d+
\d+(.\d+)? *(dpi|kbytes|bytes|kb)
Use File Name instead of Subject Line
Directory names will be based on the filenames rather than on the subject lines. All the rules in the rule box will be applied to filenames instead of subject lines. I rarely find this option necessary, especially now that Auto-Move is applied to filegroups only.
Accuracy In Merging Similar Subjects
Only Auto-Move Files with File lists. (Highly Recommended) Unless there is a great outcry from users, the next version of .ionEngine will only allow auto-move on files with file-lists. This and the following option will disappear. Let me know if this won't work for you! I am making this change because I found that there were too many false positive matches otherwise. In other words groups of files were being lumped together that were not related. With this new setting selected that should never happen.
Percentage of subject line that must match. If the option above is not selected, then .ionEngine will attempt to intelligently figure out related files based on similarities in the subject line. See above.
Rules
The user configurable rules are one of the most powerful parts of the program. By default a set
of rules is in place that has good general utility for a diverse set of newsgroups.
Details
Spaces
All spaces in the resulting subject line can optionally be replaced by underscores or eliminated and replaced by a capitalized start-of-next-word.
After Auto-Move has done its best at figuring out the directories to create and the files to put in them,
you have a chance to change everything around, cancel it altogether, or proceed.
Most likely you will want to do some clean up work on the directory names Auto-Move has come up with,
and there are several powerful commands available for you in the Preview Results page.
One very useful feature available in all these commands is the ability to add nested subdirectories,
just by adding a \ wherever you want it in the text.
Slice And Dice Selected Directory Names
Displays a new window with a grid of the selected subdirectories.
In this window you can select rectangular or vertical selections and delete them, replace them with other text,
or add nested subdirectories.
This command is particularly useful for removing large amounts of text from the subject lines that is all of the same length but varies a little in content.
This is the most useful of the commands as it allows you to very quickly change a large number of directories to exactly what you want.
Merge / Rename
Select one or more subdirectories and set a new name. If you select more than one subdirectory, they will be merged into
the new name that you specify. This is a simple and useful function for cases where Auto-Move has been too picky and
split what should have been a single directory into more than one.
Replace Text In Selection
Select one or more subdirectories and alter the names of each of them with standard and regex replace commands.
View Files
Pops up a list of all the files that will be moved to the selected subdirectories
Remove
Removes all the files for the selected target directories and does not create those directories. The files will remain in the root directory.
There are two main methods of integrating .ionEngine into the windows shell.
The most powerful is "Associate .ion files with this program", available
from the "preferences" menu.
This creates a file type for .ion files, associates .ionEngine with those files, and adds an icon to the file type.
This allows you to double-click on descript.ion files in windows explorer to open the program.
Also available is "Create 'Send To' Shortcut". (This option may not work depending on your system. If not, you can
create a shortcut to the program manually and move it to your send-to directory.)
A "send to" shortcut allows you to right-click on any file in the directory and "send"
it to .ionEngine. You can send any type of file to .ionEngine, not just descript.ion files.
Regular Expressions are used in the Auto-Move function to allow users to control the names of the subdirectories that are created.
The regex library implented is Microsoft's VBScript Regular Expressions 5.5.
Complete documentation is available at MSDN.
A summary is available here
Use Newsbin for downloading - its really great, and the only downloader I know of that creates descript.ion files
Always download .par files and .sfv files - at least one for every set of files, even if you don't need to recover any files
Don't use .ionEngine on a directory that Newsbin is currently downloading to. Descript.ion entries may be lost for files that Newsbin downloads while .ionEngine is open.
Keep your sorted files in a different directory tree than your download directories. This will make it much easier
to use Auto-Move.
In Auto-Move when you review the results in the Preview Results window, you can either cancel the operation in order to try different settings,
or you can change the results in the preview window itself, by right-clicking on a selected set of deirectory names. See Auto-Move Preview Results for more.
In Auto-Move Preview Results, Move-To, and most other places, you can create nested directories just by including extra slashes (\) anywhere in the string.
Some users may have difficulty installing if they don't have msvcrt.dll already installed. The installer program chokes on this file in windows 2000, and I think almost everyone will have it so I left it out of the package. not sure what to do about this - any ideas???
In consolidate, it can't remove the last directory that you opened a descript.ion file from. This seems to be a windows common dialog issue - the common dialog leaves that directory locked until the program is closed. Again, I'm stumped on how to fix this.
added "0" buttons to Power Move and Automove/SliceAndDice.
Open a directory with no descript.ion file in it
Removed support forum from quietsites.com because everyone just emails me instead, which is fine.
By Request:
Mouse Wheel Scrolling for the main grid, PowerMove grid and SliceAndDice grid (Yay!)
Fixed sort order to be ascending when you switch columns
Added to Preferences: Start-Up directory if no descript.ion file is launched
Requests Not Addressed:
Control-Click selection. This is high on my list too, but the grid control I use doesn't support it. Sorry!
Display problem at bottom of grid. Unfortunately I don't think I can fix this one
1.5 Semi-Major Upgrade
Auto-Move vastly improved by limiting it to only work on files with file lists
Power-Move (My favorite new feature)
Launch files by double-clicking them
Copy and paste from the grid
Right-Click context menu in the grid
Edit subject line in the grid
Changed the way the column sizes work. In the previous version, columns maintained their relative proportions when the window was resized, but because of rounding errors it never worked perfectly, so I switched to just saving the size of the column width, which is the way most programs do it.
Lots of little fixes that I didn't keep track of
1.0 first official release
No reported bugs since 0.9.85
Include link to support forums in help menu
0.9.85 bug fix release
fixed install package for win 2000 (nightmare)
allow create directories in unc style network paths
fix form resizing bug
fix setting not saving bug
made moveto textbox resizable
increased period of time before nag screens appear
removed feature:prepopulating the moveto drop down list. Just seemed pointless
fixed blank lines being added to end of files
fixed descript.bak files not getting deleted in consolidate
