Re: Xy4/DOS quirk? ... and Win98 instability

[Peregrine@xxxxxxxx]

Wolfgang Bechstein writes:

> Here's wondering: did inserting NI fix the problem in Jeff's case,
> and are there any others out there getting stray characters even with
> NI's in the keyboard file?

It did indeed fix my problem, both on a Cyrix 686-based Win98 machine and on
a 286 laptop running MS-DOS 5.0. Judith's point following Wolfgang's post is
a good one, too: My KBD file already had the NI function inserted in the ALT
table for the numeric keypad cursors keys, but not for the standard cursor
keys (100, 101, 102 and 103, if I recall correctly). So in my case, NI
inserted after the = sign did the trick on those keys and eliminated my
problem. And just so there's no question about this detail someday, I used a
comma after NI even though Carl said the comma was optional.

Also, it occurred to me after reading Carl's first explanation that I have
had a few more problems getting XyWrite to coexist with Win98 than I
experienced with any version of MS-DOS, with Windows 3.11 or even the
notoriously buggy Win95 first release. And if there is a "hole" that leaks
function calls direct to DOS, that could explain some problems others have
mentioned running Xy in Win98. Win98 especially seems to want to handle all
calls to DOS, and goes error-happy when anything tries to circumvent its
control. I've seen it do this with quite a few programs, as about half the
programs I use are old 16-bit workhorses that never anticipated Win98's
32-bit architecture.

As I noted recently, I run Xy4DOS in Win98 using a desktop shortcut in which
I've adjusted the properties to what seems to work best most of the time. In
the "Misc" section of the properties, I've disabled all but two of the
Windows shortcut keys, keeping Alt+Tab (which lets you toggle among active
programs) and Alt+Enter (which toggles between full-screen and window mode).
But maybe what I really needed all along was to plug this "hole" that makes
calls direct to DOS.... Well, maybe these rambling thoughts will help
somebody with related problems. Hope so.

Jeff