Re: DOS box creepers and Tame

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "Martin J. Osborne"  on
Wed, 23 Oct 2002 10:23:59 -0400

> 1. A stray flashing underscore, which looks like a cursor, appears in the
> XyWrite screen when the program is first run, in addition to the regular
> cursor. One way to get rid of this is to shell out to DOS and then exit back
> to XyWrite.

Probably your mouse, mapped on key 105, and pretty useless. Does "cursor"
disappear if you move mouse? Want to just remove the mouse from Xy4DOS?

> 2. In the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, and in the display that comes
> up upon pressing Alt-Tab, the same icon is used for all DOS programs, rather
> than a small version of the screen icon for each program, as under W95 and
> W98, making it more difficult to pick out the program to switch to.

True. But its also much more concise, and it packs all sorts of new
functionality in -- just compare the power of the two Toolbars! There's no
comparison. RMB in various blank areas, and try the options...

> 3. Suppose you shell out to DOS and run a program. After the program has
> started, control is not passed back to the DOS window, so that you can't
> return to XyWrite before you quit the program. (I use XyWrite to edit TeX
> files. I have an XPL program that shells to DOS, compiles the document, and
> then offers the option of viewing it in Ghostscript. Under W95 and W98 I can
> go back and forth between Ghostscript and XyWrite, but I can't do that under
> W2000 because I need to close Ghostscript in order to return to XyWrite.)

dos/nv/x/z /c cmd.exe /c start [lotsa handy /switches unavailable under
pathetic W9x command processor] programname args

But looking closely at what you're saying, even under pure DOS, if you
"shelled" (to me that means DOS/NV) and launched a second program, how would
you possibly "return to XyWrite before you quit the program"? No can do -- its
the same process. And how could control be "passed back to the DOS window" in
9x if the secondary process is still running? Anyway, whatever, the above
command is going to launch the second process without ever seeming to leave
XyWrite... both XyWrite and the second process will be simultaneously
available, with random access to either one, which I guess(?) is what you
want... I also can't understand why you would want to run Ghostscript and
XyWrite in the same memory space... maybe I don't understand what you're
saying...

When you say "go back and forth", what do you mean -- click on taskbar?
XyShell makes this kind of thing very easy from fullscreen/dosbox session,
using the SWitch command...

> 4. The DOS window no longer has a "toolbar" on it, so that cutting and
> pasting text from other programs now involves many more operations: one needs
> to click on the icon in the top left of the DOS window and select Edit, then
> Paste, for example, to paste in text.

Forget the Toolbar ["System Menu"]. To Copy, just select the text with LMB,
then hit Enter (or double-click to select a whole word); RMB Pastes. Works
perfectly in XyWrite DOSbox.

Prefer the keyboard? Alt-Spacebar+E+P to Paste, for example... No mousing
around. There are other ways to skin this cat too -- Martin, with respect, you
just aren't familiar with this OpSys yet! You can't expect that everything
will be "the same". Nor that solutions will all be intuitive. There's some
learning to do, that's all.

> 5. Shortcut keys apparently don't work for DOS programs. That is, even if
> one assigns a shortcut key in the Program tab of the Properties of the
> desktop item, it has no effect.

Strange! I have a half dozen DOS Hotkeys, and they all work just fine. Either
they open the program, or, if already open, they shift focus to it. I can
think of a couple of things. W2K has a much beefier security layer, and (just
guessing here) you might need Administrator privileges to alter the keyboard --
but I assume you are the Administrator of your machine... Ah! Wait a second.
I know what you're doing: you're using COMMAND.COM! Can't shake those old
habits. Do this: RMB in a blank area of the Desktop==>New==>Shortcut==>
%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c start d:\path\editor.exe /e4000
Set your "Shortcut key", e.g. Ctrl-Alt-X. It *will* work. (Although there
was, I think, a problem before SP1 with Hotkeys getting "lost", whatever that
meant -- I wasn't using W2K at the time, so can't say, but you should
definitely go to SP3 ASAP if you installed an early version).

> By far the most annoying "feature" is the slow and jerky response to
> keystrokes, which perhaps Tame will eventually fix.

I think the solution to this is quite close. It's actually a simple bug, with
a simple fix. But it does need to be married to CPU utilization control -- CPU
hogging(something that no MS OpSys addresses) -- which is why I pin my hopes on
Tame. It tames the hogs very nicely.

Before you go back to W9x, you might consider a third option, which is XP
(horrors). After all, W2K was designed as a server and system administration
OpSys. XP is designed to replace both WNT and W9X -- for example, to be a
gaming platform. It's one thing to use dinosaur programs, and quite another to
use an antediluvian operating system -- you really get left behind. As soon as
M$ comes out with its XP server, I think you can kiss everything else goodbye,
as far as support or development goes.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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