Re: Tame: I spoke too soon

[Carl Distefano cld@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from "Patricia M. Godfrey"  Thu,
27 Dec 2007 14:04:43 -0800

> I don't think so. Carl and Robert can say for sure, but I
> thought the whole point of including kmd.exe for benighted
> users of 9x (like moi) was to let one run another VDM without
> having to shell?

You have no choice but to shell if you want to run an external
command from XyWrite. (Many U2 routines do so, of course.) KMD.EXE
doesn't necessarily open a separate VDM -- although you can use it
to do so with the START command that's built into KMD.EXE and
CMD.EXE, the Win32 command interpreter (see below). The point of
KMD.EXE is that it provides an NT-level command processor that works
consistently in 9x and every other Win32 OS. That's the key virtue
of KMD.EXE: consistent results under any Win32 OS.

As for same VDM vs. new VDM, consider the following commands:

dos/nv/z
(Shell to COMMAND.COM -- i.e., open a DOS command-line session -- in
the same VDM as EDITOR.EXE)

dos/nv/z /c MY.BAT
(Shell to COMMAND.COM and run MY.BAT in Editor's VDM)

dos/nv/z /c kmd.exe
(Shell to COMMAND.COM, then launch KMD.EXE in Editor's VDM)

dos/nv/z /c kmd.exe /c MY.BAT
(Shell to COMMAND.COM, launch KMD.EXE, then run MY.BAT -- KMD.EXE
interprets the BATch commands -- in Editor's VDM)

dos/nv/z /c kmd.exe /c start
(Shell to COMMAND.COM, launch KMD.EXE, then START a new CMD.EXE (not
KMD.EXE) session in a separate VDM)

dos/nv/z /c kmd.exe /c start MY.BAT
(Shell to COMMAND.COM, launch KMD.EXE, then START a new CMD.EXE
session and run MY.BAT -- CMD.EXE interprets the BATch commands --
in a separate VDM)

dos/nv/z /c kmd.exe /c start kmd.exe /c MY.BAT
(Shell to COMMAND.COM, launch KMD.EXE, then START a new KMD.EXE
session and run MY.BAT -- KMD.EXE interprets the BATch commands --
in a separate VDM)

Note that to run any of these commands you must, at a minimum, load
a second instance of COMMAND.COM on top of Editor to get things
rolling. In other words, you've got to shell.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx