Re: v112 U2--just to clarify

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to note from Harry Binswanger  on Sun, 08
Sep 2002 21:45:28 -0400

> Will XyShell allow
> me to do things with Eudora (Win98)? Like using it to expand its own
> aliases and outputting the result to a file? Even just the ability to have
> Xy close a running Win ap would be a big help to me.

Well, I'm not familiar with this app, but it sounds like AOL's
browser, which hides the actual links in your bookmarks file, and
won't let you output them to disk (so that, e.g., you could move your
bookmarks to a different browser -- any browser being better than
AOL's). Look, if *you* can't get it to expand its aliases, how could
Rexx? Well, actually, I bet it could, but you'd need to know the
Eudora alias-file structure, and it would be a very narrow-purpose
program, written I suspect by Harry Binswanger, who happens to care
about this odd problem.

Rexx is a very efficient, very evolved scripting language. It can
probably close any running app, and I could build in that capability
(if my W2K hard disk hadn't decided to die on me last night). But
mainly XyShell is used for a few special purpose apps that happen to
interest me (like fetching NWS weather reports into a XyWrite window
-- hey, I'm a farmer, the weather is a large daily consideration),
and otherwise -- more generally -- to launch external apps, to
control which running process has current focus, and to restore focus
to XyWrite when *you* elect to terminate an external app or process.
Thus, for example, if you wanted to run a Postscript XyWrite, and to
view XyWrite files (the way they will really appear) in an
Acrobat-like window, you can do that at any time, then close the
Postscript window and return directly to XyWrite, all with one Xy
keystroke. That's a "canned" XyShell app. The point here is that
Rexx can do a lot, but -- like everything in computing --
programming, either mine or yours, makes it work.

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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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