Re: Further to XY under XP: finding config.xy

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "Robert Holmgren" 
on Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:33:52 -0400

You know, there isn't just one way to skin this cat. There are
many many ways; and I've put one spin on it, but there are other
spins too. In addition to the specific problems that you're
having, I wonder whether you're using any of the little
conveniences that make NT easy to work with and navigate? For
example, have you right-clicked on an empty portion of the
Taskbar (by default, at the bottom of the Desktop), click
"Toolbars", then checkmark "Desktop" and "Quick Launch". Have
you dragged apps down to the Quick Launch pad (by default, left
side of the Taskbar). Tried LeftWinkey-D (and again, a second
time). LeftWinkey-M.

If you're on a multi-user machine rather than your own personal
machine, and you can't monopolize the Desktop, make a personal
folder on the Desktop and put all your stuff there -- then you
have easy access to it via "Taskbar ==> Desktop >>" (click the
">>" symbol). Windows encourages you to create different Users
with different persona, to Log In/Log Out, and to make sure
nobody has Administrator privileges -- this way each user has
her own Desktop and configuration, and no user can completely
wreck the machine -- but I find all that to be very labored, I
have nothing to hide, have no reason to fear malice, and always
want to operate as Administrator (Who is plenipotentiary), so I
don't have multiple users except where a specific program
requires it (IIS requires it, for example -- but anyone who uses
IIS in preference to Apache or just about any other web server
is crazy).

Concerning the AUTOEXEC program embedded in the Advanced tab of
a PIF, best not to call it AUTOEXEC.XY unless you've ASSOCiated
".XY" with BATchfiles. Better to call it AUTOXY4.NT or whatever
-- to give it an .NT extension (which is what the default does
-- the reason being that the session is run by NTVDM.EXE). If
you run Tame in the session, for example, this AUTOEXEC file is
where you start TAME-NT.COM.

My AUTOEXEC for Xy4 (actually originally created for WordPerf
and filed as %SystemRoot%\system32\AUTOWP51.NT -- but no matter)
says the following:
 lh %SystemRoot%\system32\mscdexnt.exe
 lh %SystemRoot%\system32\redir.exe
 lh %SystemRoot%\system32\dosx.exe
 %SystemRoot%\system32\mode.com CON: COLS=80 LINES=25
 %SystemRoot%\system32\chcp.com 850
 d:\path\tame-nt.com

Lastly, you can of course point the "Working Dir" pretty much
anywhere you want, including your data dir, because the only
dependency of EDITOR.EXE is a STARTUP file, and you can point at
that on the command line:
 editor.exe ,startupfile
and then do all the necessary CHDIR stuff within STARTUP. But I
put a high priority on always having a "portable" setup, i.e.
one that will work wherever I happen to locate my XyWrite files,
even on a memory key, or at a remote location, or on a CD. In
that scenario, it's nuts to put EDITOR on one drive and your
main data files on another drive -- you want to keep it all
together within one subdirectory tree, using fixed, memorable
subdirnames that will readily travel to any Win32 or *nix
environment. That way, you can easily grab everything and run
(ZIP up the entire mess with a single command, copy it,
whatever).

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