Re: Re XY and Win2k

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Paul Breeze  on Fri, 29
Nov 2002 00:22:49 +0000


> I can't for the moment work out how to circumvent w2k's defences
> and change its own version of COMMAND.COM for EDITOR.EXE...
> I renamed command.com to something else and then I renamed
> editor.exe, command.com.

Use the SHELL= command. To do that under W2K, you'd set up (in a PIF, at
Properties==>Program==>Advanced) dedicated CONFIG and AUTOEXECs for an
experimental Xy4 object (call them CONFXYW.NT and AUTOXYW.BAT -- make sure it's
renamed BAT, because Xy4 doesn't know anything about "*.NT" files), change the
filenames in the Program==>Advanced tab of the PIF, and add a line to CONFXYW
to set
SHELL=d:\path\EDITOR.EXE. I suppose you could (instead of SHELL=) SET COMSPEC=
in AUTOXYW.BAT, but the whole point is that Editor should acquire an
environment, and it can't do that if it doesn't know that it's the new command
shell until after the environment is set (in AUTOXYW)! OTOH, can XyWrite even
run AUTOXYW.BAT, after becoming the command shell? Dunno, you'd have to
experiment.

IMO, when you're all done, you'll gain nothing, while the drawbacks are
immense. It made some sense under DOS, because you could only run one program
at a time, and the extremely limited scope of the DO command (now your de facto
command processor) was probably adequate for many users. But now, XyWrite will
be cut off from the rest of your machine. If you try to shell to DOS (e.g.
DOS/NV), you'll just get another iteration of Editor. You'll have no controls.
And screen refresh in a Desktop DOS box isn't controlled by XyWrite or DOS;
it's controlled by W2K -- by NTVDM.EXE, which will still be Editor's direct
parent. I think you'll be as "jerky" as ever.

The route to resolving the jerkiness issue is time slices and screen refreshes.

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