Reply to note from Edward Mendelson Sat, 15 Jan 2022 09:14:12 -0500
> I've now added the B:\Xy4U2\PRINT folder to the DOS path in my Mac
> app, and that worked correctly (along with adding \PRINT to
> startup.int). But is there any way to make this portable, so
> \PRINT\ will work without changing the DOS path first?
Edward, yes, there is. I've updated the portable setup:
https://xywwweb.ammaze.net/dls/Xy4018-U2.zip
Only two files have changed since the last update: STARTUP.INT and
SETTINGS.DFL. The printer-file listing has been commented out of
SETTINGS.DFL. STARTUP.INT now establishes a separate file, PP.PRN, from
which printer files are loaded. PP.PRN is created, on the fly, every
time XyWrite starts, allowing a path to printer files to be effectively
hard-coded, without affecting portability. In order to adapt this to
your app, you'll need to open STARTUP.INT in an editor and, near the
bottom of the file, insert "PRINT\" ahead of each printer-file name.
So, for example, change "\STANDARD.PRN to "\PRINT\STANDARD.PRN, and so
forth.
(I've also modified SETTINGS.DFL to enable the automatic new window
setting [df nw=3]. It's sadistic to force users to manually open a new
window every time they CAll a file.)
> maybe STARTUP.INT could include a command that uses the value that
> you've already found for the Xy4 folder and do something like BX
> DO PATH [value of variable]\PRINT;%PATH%; Q2
This doesn't work because XyWrite's DO/DOS commands load a secondary
copy of the DOS command processor. Any changes to that secondary
environment do not affect the primary DOS environment that XyWrite
itself is running in.
For this reason, in my portable setup, I don't see any way around
requiring the user to manually edit the DOS path to include the
directory with EDITOR.EXE. Not so in your app, however.
If you're bundling DOSBox-X with it, you can specify 4DOS.COM as the
command processor, and launch XyWrite with a simple BATch file, say
XY4START.BAT:
@echo off
path %_CWD;%path%
editor.exe
You'd have to test it, of course, but I'm pretty sure that Bob would be
your uncle.
--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxxxx