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Running Windows commands from within XyWrite-DOS



Since the dawn of the era of XyWrite running in a DOS emulator under 64-bit Windows -- an era that I
date back to late 2014 when Peter a/k/a CatastrophicAnomaly released his vDos fork that (finally!)
supported XyWrite's idiosyncratic keyboard handling -- I've been fairly obsessed with making XyWrite
for DOS (chiefly, XyWrite 4) interoperable with the Windows OpSys and its many applications.
Fortunately for all of us, Wengier came along with vDos-LFN/vDosPlus and, later, DOSBox-X, which
raised that interoperability to new heights.

All along, however, the stern gatekeeper to the XyWrite-Windows passageway has been XyWrite's DOS
command, by which XyWrite "shells" to DOS and thence, thanks to DOS emulation under
Windows, to Windows itself. It's a fairly touchy command -- in some environments "DOS /C
<Windows_command>" will take you to Windows while others require "DOS /C cmd.exe /c
<Windows_command>", and it imposes memory burdens on XyWrite by loading a secondary copy
of DOS, which then (if you're lucky) invokes cmd.exe on top of everything else. For a long time I've
wished there were another way.

Recently I came up with a method that bypasses the DOS command, with pretty-good results in my early
testing. I call it Winstart, and I offer it here for evaluation. The best implementation of it is in
the XyWWWeb U2 for XyWrite 4, but I've also developed a generic version that runs in XyWrite III+
and in XyWrite 4 without U2.

You can read more about it here:

https://ammaze.net/xywwweb/dls/WINSTART.TXT

The generic package is available for download here:

https://ammaze.net/xywwweb/dls/winstart.zip

Interested Jumbo U2 users will be better off installing the latest version of U2 (dated 2024-05-11),
available at the XyWWWeb home page:

http://xywrite.org/xywwweb/

The changelog describes Winstart for U2 and other routines that I've either recently added or
updated:

https://ammaze.net/xywwweb/dls/change.lgopdf

This is all rather recent and experimental, so try it, if you're so inclined, with an open mind and
a healthy grano salis. As always, your comments are welcome.

-- 
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxxxx