Re: Revised installer for XyWin

["Wengier W" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "wengierwu" for DMARC)]

Edward,

> Wengier could presumably make a version of start.exe that opened a 

> command window if you ran it with no parameters, and of course that 

> would be a lot simpler and smaller than this complex workaround. But 

> this will do in the meantime.

OK. So I was able to find the source code of my start.exe in one of my older computers and made change to it.

The update is as follows:

It will now check for the existence of the file cmds.lst (in the current directory or the directory containing start.exe),

and if this file is found, and the command name (e.g. dir) is listed in this file, then start.exe will automatically launch

cmd.exe to run the command and then wait for the user to type any key to exit. Otherwise, run the command in the

normal way. The start.exe options (+/-/_ or /MAX, /MIN, /HID) are not changed and can be applied to both cases.

The zip file containing start.exe and cmds.lst can be downloaded from:

http://vdosplus.org/files/start.zip

Where the file cmds.lst is just a text file containing a list of commands (e.g. dir, attrib, echo, etc) (one per line) that

you want to launch via cmd.exe, and the file can be modified easily with any text editor. Hope this helps.

Wengier

On Monday, January 27, 2020, 11:39:43 a.m. EST, Edward Mendelson <em36@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Kari,

OTVDM can be anywhere. Just copy all the files in the current OTVDM

folder to the folder where you want otvdm to be, and click on the

"Install" shortcut. You'll need to reinstall my XyWin installer, but it

will find the otvdm folder from the Registry.

My OtvdmInstaller creates the OTVDM folder in the root folder of the

Windows system drive, but that's just for convenience.

As for Go to DOS in XyWin, your wish is my command. Download this ZIP

file and place the two files in your otvdm folder:

www.columbia.edu/~em36/otvdmHelpers.zip

The "Command.com" file is an AutoIt wrapper for FileOpen.exe (really

Wengier's start.exe) that launches cmd.exe if you run my command.com

program with no parameters. You can use up to four parameters for the

DOS/nz/v command, but if you simply Go to DOS, you'll get the cmd window.

If you want to run one of these internal command-line commands: dir,

attrib, chcp, ver, or set, then I've written the command.com script so

that you can simply enter those commands after DOS/nv/z on the Xy

command line. I can add to that list easily, of course. This means you

can use:

DOS/nv/z attrib *.* | more

and get the results you want.

If you want to run some other internal DOS command from the Xy command

line, then you'll need to use:

DOS/nv/z cmd /k COMMANDNAME

Again, as I said, I can add other internal commands to the list that's

already there.

I don't know how that compares to normal XyWrite.

Of course if you want to run Notepad.exe or any other non-DOS-style

command, simply run

DOS/nv/z notepad.exe filename.txt

Wengier could presumably make a version of start.exe that opened a

command window if you ran it with no parameters, and of course that

would be a lot simpler and smaller than this complex workaround. But

this will do in the meantime.