shedevil@leland.Stanford.EDU (Annie) (04/15/91)
I have two programs that I often have loaded at the same time, one is a term
program, and one is a word-processor (procomm, and w.p.).
Both of them have functions to escape to Dos, and then you type 'exit' to
get back to the program. When I am in Dos during these times, I see:
Type "EXIT" to get back to WordPerfect
Type "EXIT" to get back to Procomm
If I just type "exit" it brings me back to whichever one I exited LAST.
Is there a way to designate which job I want to 'exit' to, so that I
can go back and forth between the two?
Thanks!
--
mother - law student - antifeminist - honourary canajan - fathers' rightist
Anne (She Devil) Mitchell - Stanford Law - shedevil@leland.stanford.edu
No disclaimer necessary as this is *my* account, and besides - nobody
would ever accuse anyone else of having these opinions anyway!moshkovi@sanandreas.ecn.purdue.edu (Gennady Moshkovich) (04/15/91)
shedevil@leland.Stanford.EDU (Annie) writes: >I have two programs that I often have loaded at the same time, one is a term >program, and one is a word-processor (procomm, and w.p.). >Both of them have functions to escape to Dos, and then you type 'exit' to >get back to the program. When I am in Dos during these times, I see: >Type "EXIT" to get back to WordPerfect >Type "EXIT" to get back to Procomm >If I just type "exit" it brings me back to whichever one I exited LAST. >Is there a way to designate which job I want to 'exit' to, so that I >can go back and forth between the two? >Thanks! >-- > mother - law student - antifeminist - honourary canajan - fathers' rightist > Anne (She Devil) Mitchell - Stanford Law - shedevil@leland.stanford.edu > No disclaimer necessary as this is *my* account, and besides - nobody > would ever accuse anyone else of having these opinions anyway! Well, I would be more than happy to have DOS where you would be able to have 'background' jobs, but ... The answer to your question is very deep NO. The fact is that ones you got to DOS you are not running your program in background, you just stopped it. You might consider some programs which would allow you pseudomultitasking. Two most popular of these programs are Windows 3.0 and DESQview. They run on top of DOS and will let you switch between programs quite easily. Have fun Gene -- Gennady Moshkovich Purdue University Department of Civil Engineering moshkovi@ecn.purdue.edu
smsmith@hpuxa.acs.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M. Smith) (04/15/91)
shedevil@leland.Stanford.EDU (Annie) writes: > >I have two programs that I often have loaded at the same time, one is a term >program, and one is a word-processor (procomm, and w.p.). > [deletions] >Is there a way to designate which job I want to 'exit' to, so that I >can go back and forth between the two? The answer is no. Here's a schema of what's happening: ____________________ | | | PROCOMM--1st | | program | | started | |__________________| | (shell to DOS) __________|_________ | | | W.P.--2nd | | program | | started | |__________________| | (shell to DOS) Thus after shelling to DOS out of your wp program, you can only get back to ProComm by going back into wp and then quiting that, then exiting from the next shell which would then take you back to ProComm. In addition, when both programs are in memory they both reside in base memory (0-640k)--I'm a little surprised you had enough memory for both to fit! The good news is that there is a way of "switching" between the two. There are PD and/or inexpensive shareware programs around which will allow you to do this. Try looking at wuarchive.wustl.edu in /mirror/msdos. Maybe the subdirectory /mirrors/msdos/sysutl will have something; in fact I just saw something that should do the trick a couple days ago, and I'm pretty sure it was at wuarchive. Download the readme file in /mirrors/msdos/sysutl and read the descriptions--I think there might be a program there which will suit your needs. If not, look over the other subdirectories in /mirrors/msdos. Steve Smith smsmith@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (04/15/91)
In article <1991Apr14.233111.28957@leland.Stanford.EDU> shedevil@leland.Stanford.EDU (Annie) writes: > Is there a way to designate which job I want to 'exit' to, so that I > can go back and forth between the two? No. This is a reasonable question, but you need to understand something about DOS: it's not really an operating system. It's a file system and program loader. When you call DOS from some program it loads COMMAND.COM and passes control to it... completely. The previously loaded program is hidden. Think of it as a stack: you push a program on top of the stack, and pop one off. There are operating systems you can buy that load under DOS and provide an interface to it: DesqView, Windows, DoubleDOS, etc... perhaps one of those will let you do what you want. Or you could switch to a computer with a real operating system, but I suspect that's not an option. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' peter@ferranti.com +1 713 274 5180. 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
tr@samadams.princeton.edu (Tom Reingold) (04/19/91)
Another way to explain it is in terms of layers. If a worm is already
inside an onion and burrows out towards the edge, he can turn around
and go back to his previous layer (analogous to your typing EXIT), but
he cannot hop straight to the center.
--
Tom Reingold
tr@samadams.princeton.edu OR ...!princeton!samadams!tr
"Warning: Do not drive with Auto-Shade in place. Remove
from windshield before starting ignition."