dhf@tatum.mitre.org (David H. Friedman) (12/06/90)
. I'm looking for a good way to set up a DOS window with some TSR's
loaded, specifically CED and the PC Magazine SETUP2 utility. I've
been using a PIF to run (windowed, in 800x600) a file COMMAND.BAT
that looks like
ced
setup2 myprintr.pmf
command
This leaves the window open with CED loaded and the SETUP2 hotkey
active. To exit from COMMAND.COM, I enter EXIT and the window closes.
So far, so good. But I've found that if I minimize the window and
restore it, the CED command-history buffer is flushed (although CED
is still there) and the SETUP2 hotkey is no longer active.
I realize that this scheme leaves three copies of COMMAND.COM in
memory: #1 on booting the system, #2 loaded by Windows to run the
batch file and exit, #3 loaded by the batch file to actually appear
in the window. If I leave out the line "command" from the file, #3
is not loaded, and Windows gives a message "Your TSR is ready to use.
Enter ^C to close this window.." instead of dropping me into copy #2.
For the record, my system is a NEC 386/20 with 2 Mb, running in
386 mode, with CommandPost 7.0J as the Windows shell in place of
ProgMan and FileMan. The minimize/restore sequence described above
occurs even if no other applications are loaded, so memory isn't
necessarily the issue.
Has anyone found a better way? I recall there was some discussion
on this topic a few weeks ago.
dhf@linus.mitre.org (David H. Friedman)ergo@netcom.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) (12/09/90)
In <127136@linus.mitre.org> dhf@tatum.mitre.org (David H. Friedman) writes: >. I'm looking for a good way to set up a DOS window with some TSR's >loaded, specifically CED and the PC Magazine SETUP2 utility. I've >been using a PIF to run (windowed, in 800x600) a file COMMAND.BAT >that looks like > ced > setup2 myprintr.pmf > command >(details of what goes wrong when you do this omitted) One solution is to replace some of the MicroSloth software with something that's a little better designed. I use 4DOS instead of command.com, which eliminates the need for ced, but that still leaves a couple of TSRs I need, at least until I find Windows replacements for them. But 4DOS also lets you pass it an initial command as an argument. (This was meant to get around the line-size limit in config.sys.) Make that argument the name of a BAT file with your initialization commands, and you're home free. But while we're automating everything, it'd be nice if this command were itself run automatically when you start up windows. I had resigned myself to doing without this until I'd figured out all those .ini files, when I ran accross Command Post. I originally tried CP just as an alternative to the File Manager, but it also has a sort of windows manipulation language that can automatically do various stuff when CP starts. And if you reconfigure windows to use CP in place of the Program Manager and/or Task Manager, this all happens automatically when you run windows. CP has some problems, not the least of which is Profligate Menuitis. The language I just mentioned is called the "Command Post Menu Language", and it's mainly meant to setup up complicated command bar menus. (The author seems to prefer getting lost in umpteem menus to tripping over a zillion icons.) The startup feature is just a sort of side effect of this. What's really frustrating is that CPML stops just sort of being a real batch language for Windows. Maybe in the next version.... In any case, the parts of CP I can live with are indispensible (how can I use a system that doesn't do batch stuff?), so I guess I'll have to register it. Both of the above programs are shareware. I can't ftp, so ask somebody else where to find them. -- ergo@netcom.uucp Isaac Rabinovitch netcom!ergo@apple.com Silicon Valley, CA {apple,amdahl,claris}!netcom!ergo THIS STATEMENT IS VERIFIABLY, IRREFUTABLY TRUE!