Little Marvels

[Doug Beeson]

For all you XPL coders and dabblers:

I have uncovered a neat little trick that allows you to put *and keep* lengthy messages on
the prompt line, even after a program has ended. The first part of the trick involves the
"default mg=" command (default message line), but with the added use of the
"/lc"
parameter to allow a mixed case message to be posted. (The standard "default mg=" displays
the message in all upper case.) So,

BX default/lc mg=Doug!Q2

will display "Doug!" on the prompt line (no quotes) until a new default mg= command is
issued.

You can abbreviate that to BX d/lc mg=Doug!Q2 for the same result.

So far, nothing really new. A few examples of d/lc can be found in the .DLG file. The
Problem for would-be displayers of long prompt messages is that d/lc mg= will not accept
spaces in the message. It takes only the first word in the sentence:

BX d/lc mg=Doug's great ideaQ2

will give "Doug's" as a message. What I found after a little snooping was a way to place
full sentences, *complete with blank spaces* between words, on the prompt line. The
second part of the trick, then, is to use ASCII 15 (looks like a snowflake) as the "space"
character in your message. Try this: (substitute your own name if you really must)

BX d/lc mg=Doug's|015|great|015|ideaQ2    where |015| means the ASCII 15 character
produced by typing Ctrl-Alt 15.

This works both on the command line directly and in XPL programs to "permanently" display

Doug's great idea

To get rid of the message, just issue a "d mg=" command again. Now, isn't that simply
great?

 -Doug Beeson