Re: DOS box creepers and Tame

["Martin J. Osborne" osborne@xxxxxxxx]

I'm using W2000 and also see little if any improvement with Tame. (I have
the idle sensitivity set as low as possible, as suggested.) [The error
message about the repeat rate settings can be avoided by making the setting
df ks=10,1.]

In case anyone else is considering getting a W2000 or XP machine, I detect
the following additional respects in which XyWrite (and other DOS programs)
operate less well under these operating systems than they do under W95 or
W98. (Some of the items on this list may depend on other aspects of my
setup, not W2000---I haven't fully investigated all of them yet---though I
suspect W2000 in each case.)

1. A stray flashing underscore, which looks like a cursor, appears in the
XyWrite screen when the program is first run, in addition to the regular
cursor. One way to get rid of this is to shell out to DOS and then exit back
to XyWrite.

2. In the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, and in the display that comes
up upon pressing Alt-Tab, the same icon is used for all DOS programs, rather
than a small version of the screen icon for each program, as under W95 and
W98, making it more difficult to pick out the program to switch to.

3. Suppose you shell out to DOS and run a program. After the program has
started, control is not passed back to the DOS window, so that you can't
return to XyWrite before you quit the program. (I use XyWrite to edit TeX
files. I have an XPL program that shells to DOS, compiles the document, and
then offers the option of viewing it in Ghostscript. Under W95 and W98 I can
go back and forth between Ghostscript and XyWrite, but I can't do that under
W2000 because I need to close Ghostscript in order to return to XyWrite.)

4. The DOS window no longer has a "toolbar" on it, so that cutting and
pasting text from other programs now involves many more operations: one needs
to click on the icon in the top left of the DOS window and select Edit, then
Paste, for example, to paste in text.

5. Shortcut keys apparently don't work for DOS programs. That is, even if
one assigns a shortcut key in the Program tab of the Properties of the
desktop item, it has no effect. [There appear to be two ways of putting a
program on the desktop, one resulting in a Properties screen with "General",
"Shortcut", "Options", ... as the tabs, and one with "General",
"Security",
"Summary", ... as the tabs. I have XyWrite set up in the latter way.]

By far the most annoying "feature" is the slow and jerky response to
keystrokes, which perhaps Tame will eventually fix. But the other features
are also very irritating. My own current plan is to either return to W98 or
to see if VMWare's software will successfully run W98 as a virtual machine
within W2000.

(Given the uses to which I put my computer, I see no advantages to W2000; W98
(and, indeed W95) crash only very rarely for me.)

michael.norman@xxxxxxxx wrote:

> Finally got a new machine (XP) at work and set up XyDos4.018 in a Dos Box
> and got the creeping or jerking cursor reported here. Downloaded Tame and
> tried it and did not notice any improvement. Also on command line got the
> error msg: "Keyboard did not accept new repeat rate settings." Tried
> fiddling with repeat rate in Win control panel; no effect. Wondering how
> Tame trials are coming or if there are any other developments. Thanks.
>
> Michael Norman

--
Martin J. Osborne
Department of Economics
150 St. George Street
University of Toronto
Toronto
M5S 3G7
Canada
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca

martin.osborne@xxxxxxxx
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne
+1 416-978-5094