NB Startup

[Michael Norman michael.norman@xxxxxxxx]

Herewith a brief, basic report on trying to get started with NB70b. XY and
NB may share the same engines, and the commands and functions may be
similar, but I have to keep reminding myself it's a WIN app, and there's
quite a bit of dissonance. (W98SE)
As Robert has written here, the program does not automatically invoke a
startup.int (perhaps 6.1.1 did; I don't remember). NB7 is controlled by
nb.ini in NBWIN\USERS\DEFAULT. In that file there's a _[startup]_ section
in which you can run routines/programs. NB comes with an NBSTART.INT file.
The file is empty. Why it's included I can not say. I've experimented with
it as a program file. I've also followed Robert's advice and created a
NBSTART.PM and tried that as well. All this was done in XY. (I've long
forgotten, nor can I find in the Customization Guide, the difference
between NE and NEP. I used both for this work and it did not seem to
matter. I've also forgotten how to create the blind execute BX and execute
quit Q2 you need. I just copied what I had, but it would be good to know.)
Whatever you call the STARTUP file, there *seem* to be some tasks it won't
perform; i.e if you try to call a test file, [BX ca testnb Q2 ;*;] NB calls
the file all right, but then it opens a persistent dialog asking whether
you want to open a second copy of the same file. (I tried this using
several different STARTUP files and using [BC ca testnb XC] and the results
were the same.) It will not open a directory in the writing window. [BX dir
Q2 ;*;] gives you a directory in the command line box. It will set files to
sort in reverse order [BX order d,r Q2 ;*;], but this affects only the
directory lists you call up on the command line, not in the file management
dialog. I'm guessing NBSTARTUP is limited -- limited in the sense it will
not do many of the things STARTUP can do in XY. Or perhaps I'm blind to
some basic considerations and am making some very basic errors here.
I haven't made up my mind whether I want to use NB's file management
dialogs or to try to continue with directory lists, as we do in XY, but I'd
like to have both options. I don't do a lot with my startup as it is -- set
the default directory, load settings.dfl, U2, keyboard, a saveget and call
up the directory -- and all of those things can be managed in NB's .dfl or
nb.ini. one way or the other.
As far as I can tell from the NB list, not many folks use NBSTART; Mary
Bernard, of course, uses it and she was kind enough to send me a copy of
her startup.  She does the following: sets error correction on (this on
the advice of RH); makes her directories sort by reverse date; sets df nw=1
(with the command d nw=1); loads a program that overrides NB's search menu;
and does a couple of other jobs (loading things mostly) I'm still trying to
parse. Be useful to know what Robert does in his NBSTART.PM. and what he''s
tried that does not work.
I wanted to see how STARTUP worked - and what I was able to discover and
understand of it -- before I loaded U2, which, apparently, you can do
either directly in the nb.ini *[startup]* section or in a STARTUP file.
Enough for the moment. Corrigenda appreciated.
Michael Norman