Title: RE: Xy on a flash drive
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Chris Madsen
>So the solution is to stick all the stuff you want to load at startup into the same directory as EDITOR.EXE, and then change startup.int to have no paths. It will search the >current directory first for the file to load. You have to do the same with settings.dfl.
Here's a solution proposed a few months ago (it also refers to another solution that can be found by searching on the word "portable" in the archive database):
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** Reply to message from cld@xxxxxxxx (Carl Distefano) on Sat, 2 Nov 2002 00:19:56 -0500
May I offer an alternative approach to a "portable" XyWrite?
This may appeal to someone who doesn't want to change the
way XyWrite loads, and/or finds that s/he wants to set a
large number of variables. The basic idea is to make all
your configuration file (DFL, INT, PRN, REG, etc) settings point at an unused drive like Z:, and then use DOS's SUBST command to redirect the XyWrite's d:\path (and subdirtree) to the root directory of Z:. There are advantages compared to Carl's method, and also disadvantages, but in general I find it easier. All my installations point at Z:, which means that I can take any file from one machine and put it on any other machine, transparently.
I also have a second kind of installation, pointing at Z:, which I burn to CDs. I can carry the CD into an Internet Cafe, or to anybody's machine, and presto I have my own Editor, with all my personal configurations, looking just like it does at home, instantly available. You can read/write/edit files anywhere on the host machine. It even AutoRuns when I put the CD in the drive, on machines that haven't disabled that. But this is a trickier thing to set up, because normally XyWrite wants to write Temp files in the current directory, or in the same directory as Editor, and of course a CD is Read-Only (so the configuration can't be altered). Overcoming that requires editing a few files, like changing many U2 VA$ED specs to VADR, and being careful that files that use indexes (DLG, U2) have an index written after the EOF character before you put them on CD; still, when you get it all adjusted, it works. If you travel a lot, it's mighty handy; you can also stick all your favorite utilities on the CD, and simply temporarily add Z:\ to the DOS PATH.
The disadavantages are, generally, that Z: might already be
in use (mapped to a network drive, etc), or that access to
C:\ (where I write my Temp files, on the theory that it must
exist) might be restricted to guest users on a public
machine (e.g. at Kinkos) because they don't want you mucking with the operating system files, or that access to DOS might be disallowed to your class of user on a public machine. But restrictions like that are rare on personal machines.-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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