Re: Why I find Windows 95's "DOS" unsatisfactory.

[Norman Bauman nbauman@xxxxxxxx]

At 02:32 AM 5/25/00 +1000, Michael Edwards wrote:
>
>   Well, there are commands missing which previous versions had. "Tree" is
>one I can think of, and I have an idea there are a few others. You also
used to
>be able to type "help " or "fasthelp " to get
>information on switches, etc. to use with commands, and you can't do that
with
>Windows 95's DOS commands.

In Windows 98, at least you can use  /? to get a help screen.
Unfortunately, you can't type DOS HELP to get a window linking to all the
DOS commads that are available, or at least I haven't figured out how to
get such a list.

>   Also, you cause a bit of trouble if you start trying to use disk
utilities
>such as Norton's or XTree Gold. The inability to use these with Windows,
even
>when in a DOS window, is to me a severe handicap and has crippled my computer
>use in the year and a half I've been using Windows. (I've always depended on
>these for managing my files and subdirectories, and think Windows Explorer
is a
>pathetic substitute.) (Some of the Norton utilities freeze the computer;
XTree
>Gold will work, but Windows issues warning messages that put me off and
make me
>feel it would be dangerous to go ahead.)

Hear! Hear!

I found one good solution for XTree, and that is ZTree http://ztree.com/,
a semi-authorized (or tolerated or ignored) clone. It's real shareware,
meaning that it doesn't become disabled after 30 days, and simply works on
the honor system, so I made sure to register it.

The big thing I lose in Windows 9x, particularly with XyWrite, is Norton's
Directory Sort. There is a Windows substitute, which however only works
with 16-bit files and not 32-bit files. If anyone knows how to sort
directory files in Windows 98, I'd appreciate knowing. A big part of my
organization used to be to put my XyWrite files into a rational sequence.

The other thing I lose is ZyIndex for Win 3.1, a text search program which
had nice filters for XyWrite. It won't install in Win98. I use dTsearch
instead, which is pretty good, but I get all the XyWrite coding.



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Norman Bauman
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http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman
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