Jack Stein wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:
 JS> Roy J. Tellason wrote in a message to Jack Stein:
 JS> START is more robust in 4DOS and 4OS2 than in the default 
 JS> command processors.
 RJT> How do you mean,  here?  I've never really gotten into using
 RJT> 4DOS,  so I haven't got much of a clue as to what either it
 RJT> or 4OS2 would do for me. 
 JS> For example, you can START an OS/2 session from a DOS session, 
 JS> or START a windowed session at any screen location you want, or 
 JS> START a DOS session with any SESSION_SETTINGS you want, stuff  
 JS> like that.  All 4OS2/4DOS commands have added functionality to 
 JS> them besides the default processor commands.  Also has Alias's 
 JS> and a very much enhanced batch language, as well as a much 
 JS> better command line interface.
Ok,  I guess I'm just not familiar enough with the limitations of the usual 
command processors (so far) to see a need for this sort of stuff just yet.  
Maybe one of these days I'll get to where I start playing around with them. 
Along with all of the other stuff I have to deal with here...  
 RJT> Speaking of which,  I've seen "FM/2" raved about in a couple of 
 JS> I've used this, and a few others people seem to like, and I 
 JS> just don't like them.  I run WPS and have tried a bunch of 
 JS> replacements, none of which impressed me much, and most have 
 JS> some problems.  I maily use WPS just to configure ICONS, and 
 JS> launch an occassional app, not much else.  It's there, but 
 JS> seldom used by me.  My real shell is OS2 Commander I guess. It 
 JS> is central to most everything I do.
 RJT> And you were saying before that it resembles very much other 
 RJT> stuff that you were used to using before.  I guess that's a
 RJT> lot of it,  eh?  :-) 
 JS> No, FM/2 is a PM file manager by Mark Kimes, not a text based 
 JS> manager. 
I was referring there to your comment about having used Norton Commander 
before...
 JS> I like Mark a lot, and he's a good programer, but he is more 
 JS> into graphical stuff than I like.
Agreed.  I had it on the other box,  and just deleted it.  Probably should 
have left those utilities there,  but I can always stick them on there 
again...
 JS> Thats where the money is I guess.
I don't know.  I can't really see a need for much of what's being done 
graphically to be done that way,  not when in many cases it makes more sense 
to do it with a textmode approach.  But then,  that doesn't seem to be all 
that popular a viewpoint these days.

 JS> The internet is something I've not been big on, partly because 
 JS> I like fido, mostly I don't have the hardware yet, nor the 
 JS> on-line time to play around much.  
I like the email I have here,  and find it real convenient to ftp stuff and 
not have to worry about connect times or LD charges or the like,  but the 
rest of it isn't worth what it'd cost me to subscribe to an ISP.  I just 
turned on a bunch of echos here that are gated newsgroups,  all in the 
comp.os.os2 hierarchy,  and within a day or so turned several of them back 
off again. Still I see a lot of flaming,  cross-posting,  and similar stuff 
that's wasting my time and disk space here...
 JS> I pay by the minute for Inet, above and beyond the ISP charges.
Ouch!
 JS> I have to be REALLY hot on something to spend cash by the 
 JS> minute:-)  All the graphics crap turns me off in a big way.
Yep.  And the philosophy behind the way the whole thing is structured is that 
it *doesn't* cost you for connect time.  That's in sharp contrast to fido,  
and it's why the added junk everywhere doesn't seem to matter to many folks.
 RJT> Perhaps I should start to explore some alternate shell 
 RJT> programs,  just in case. 
 JS> I think you should stick with PMSHELL and WPS until you get 
 JS> familar with OS/2. Experiment later.  Tshell sucks, unless you 
 JS> are really memory constained or doing some very specific 
 JS> things.  It might be OK if you dedicated a machine to a BBS, 
 JS> but you would want some experience with both OS/2 and REXX 
 JS> before jumping into something like TSHELL.  I'm as hard core 
 JS> anti-graphics as you can get w/o being insane about it, and I 
 JS> prefer PMSHELL a good deal over TSHELL.  I don't like full 
 JS> screen anything.
Well,  I have that and MSHELL here to look at.  The machine in the other room 
is such a pig when it comes to the way it performs at this point that I'm 
considering the idea of exploring one of those,  or perhaps another 
alternative like filebar,  instead of the current setup.  I have no idea at 
this point how I'd go about installing a setup like that,  but I'll get 
ere.
It also strikes me as being a convenient way to use one of the other more 
limited boards here as a "server" of sorts,  on the network,  where there 
won't be all that much user interaction -- I can still be dealing with things 
under the same OS,  rather than the other alternative I'm looking at,  which 
is KA9Q and related software running in a DOS environment.
 RJT> Another thing that I need to solve is an easy way to do
 RJT> cut-and-paste out of text apps.  
 JS> Run everything in windowed sessions, I do, it's what PMSHELL is 
 JS> for.
Yeah,  but the overhead...!

 RJT> There are still a few aspects of DV that I'm *real* used to,  
 RJT> like how easy/quick it is to switch tasks,  
 JS> I have a programable key-board, so one key brings up the menu 
 JS> of running tasks, and hitting the first letter of the task 
 JS> highlites the one I want.  Not bad.  There are about 4 
 JS> different methods of switching tasks, I use them all I guess.
Four?  Which are those?
 RJT> I dunno,  I keep seeing stuff like "alt-esc" which does not
 RJT> strike me as a key combo that's exactly easy to hit.  
 JS> ALT-ESC rolls threw the opened sessions, Ctrl-Esc opens the 
 JS> running menu list.
Either way it's a reach...

 RJT> Wasn't there something posted in here a while back about 
 RJT> converting *.inf files by "printing" them to a file?  I wonder 
 RJT> how you'd do that?
 JS> HyperView will view an *.inf file and will let you cut and 
 JS> paste.  You can cut and paste to a file also.
I just picked that up, haven't looked at it yet,  though.  I was also poking 
around in the general help facility last night and remember seeing something 
about printing in there,  presumably with an option to print to a file.  I 
don't know how that'd deal with all those links,  though.  It really 
irritates me to have a link in there that pops up another window where the 
only contents is a single sentence or a very short paragraph that could've 
been included in the place where the link was.  I've seen this as well in 
some of the software I've been looking at.  I guess it's all the trend these 
days,  but I really think it's being over-used,  a lot.
 JS> VIEW is not totally bad though, you can search info files no 
 JS> problem, but of course, it's just another one of those damned 
 JS> funcky gui apps I dislike.

email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com 
--- 
---------------