stever@tektronix.UUCP (Steven D. Rogers) (04/17/86)
Wordstar will not work by itself to find text (or its own overlay files) in other than the directory it resides in. However, there are several relatively cheap utilities on the market that allow you to use Wordstar (and other programs) from another directory. These softwares still do not enable Wordstar to handle pathnames, however it is much more effective to work from directory containing the text files. These utilities work in the same manner as the DOS command path. Path only works with .BAT, .EXE, and .COM files. The utility I use is called FilePath by SDA Associates, P.O. Box 36152, San Jose, CA 95158, 408 281 7747. It works great. I don't know the names of the other ones or how well they work. I would think there would be a public domain version of this utility by now.
bc@cyb-eng.UUCP (Bill Crews) (04/22/86)
> However, there are several relatively cheap utilities on > the market that allow you to use Wordstar (and other programs) > from another directory. These softwares still do not enable > Wordstar to handle pathnames, however it is much more effective > to work from directory containing the text files. > > These utilities work in the same manner as the DOS command > path. Path only works with .BAT, .EXE, and .COM files. > > The utility I use is called FilePath by SDA Associates, > P.O. Box 36152, San Jose, CA 95158, 408 281 7747. It > works great. I don't know the names of the other ones or > how well they work. > > I would think there would be a public domain version of > this utility by now. I think there is. Also, IBM sells a Utilities diskette with such a thing on it. HOWEVER, I consistently disrecommend using such things. The reason is that the products do not know enough to do the right thing. For instance, say you are in WordStar and try to edit a file that is not in the current directory but IS in the "filepath". So it is opened and read in. But then, when you say to save it, the "filepath" facility has no way of knowing if you want it saved in the current directory or in the directory from which it is read in. So it just saves it in the current directory! This is VERY likely NOT where you wanted it. This is a major problem for DOS novices, and even for jocks like us, it is a time bomb, waiting for us to slip up. I suppose it is possible that some one of these facilities has fixed this problem somehow, like with a pop-up window or something, but, if so, I haven't heard about it. So, watch your step. -- - bc - ..!{seismo,topaz,gatech,nbires,ihnp4}!ut-sally!cyb-eng!bc (512) 835-2266