Simtel MSDOS 1992 June/SIMTEL_0692.cdr/msdos/keyboard/cedwars2.arc/CEDSYN.THD

Text File | 1988-09-10 | 22KB | 553 lines

@*
Public-domain CED and its commercial enhancement, PCED, provided many
opportunities for members to enhance the ease of use of their systems.
Messages from February and March feature examples of synonyms and prompts,
discussion of the parsing of variables in synonyms, ways to simulate the "echo
off" feature of batch files, and other goodies.


@* Message number range 227754-232623, plus some earlier (PCS-131) and 355
   (PCS-72)
@* Date range mid-February through 19 March 1986


@* CDIR

Fm: dave rothman 70240,372
To: cd 76703,2002 (X)

this thought just hit me....

how about 'cdir nn'  where nn is only files written w/in the last 'nn' days.

i just wrote a memo and its in a big \subdir and i know that i can just do the
directory and look at the last few dates (or the first few if i think to
reverse them), but 'dir 5' would be nifty and unique (plus u can do it on a dec
10 or 20...y not the pc?)!


@* SYNS

Fm: dave rothman 70240,372
To: cd 76703,2002 (X)

4 u 2 keep in mind...

u might wanna think about letting syn's running on 2 lines...ie:

syn     junk    'b-on^cd\djkjd^123^sdhkj dhjsj^*jhsfh^jashj^chdsj
..              ^chkdsk^jieu^apl^del *.*^b-off'

i have plenty of long syns, and it would be handier if i could see them all
within 80 cols...dave


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: dave rothman 70240,372 (X)

Nice synonym.  I particularly liked the automatic del *.*.  You did leave out
'keyfake "y" 13^format c:', tho.

<Now, DON'T anybody try that to see what it does!>


Fm: Earle Robinson 70135,141
To: all

Someone said that the ced definitions recently uploaded for pced offered
nothing more than what the plain public domain ced has.  Well, here are a
couple that you can't do with the latter, & are rather nice if you need to
remove lightning and sidekick from the keyboard.  Superkey is already removable
with an entry from the command line, key/k.

ced syn sk '^*key^*light^*sk'
ced syn light '^*light^*sk'
ced syn skoff 'keyfake @119 @117^kick'
ced syn lightoff 'keyfake @119 @117 27 @47 @119 @117 ^kick'

Note, that the 'lightoff' will only remove lightning AFTER sidekick has been
removed.  I have alt-v as the hot key for lightning; you will have to adjust
the '@47' in the synonym to accomodate what you may have.


Fm: dave rothman 70240,372
To: all

and another enhancement to the rothman ced,infoscope,keyfake rolodex system:

syn     is              'cd\is^*is'
syn     rolo            'keyfake "find %1" 13^is roloform'

now all i gotta do is type "rolo mantle" at the prompt and mickey mantle's
rolodex card comes to the fore.

the more i think about keyfake, the more impressed i am at with its usefulness!
it works so well w/PCED.

ps...rumor has it, dunford has included his own vers of it in the soon to be
released PCED (the beta vers did not have the dunford version).


Fm: dave rothman 70240,372
To: all

u guys may recall my little syn called 'load':

syn     lo*ad   'cd\123^chmod -n %1.wks^fix %1tmp.prn...^
                          ...keyfake "/fr%1" 13^123^chmod -h %1.wks^offstack'

(the dots are added so that the whole thing fits within 80 cols)

syn     offstack        'keyfake @72 @118 27'

load lets me keep certain confidential .wks files hidden but easily loaded into
123. for example, i might type 'load balance' to unhide my personal balance
sheet, run 123, do a /fr w/keyfake, then hide it again when i exit.

the only prob, was that the original 'load' command was always resident in
the stack, so someone could hit some uparrows and see the names of the
hidden files (clearly anyone with any real knowledge would know how to find
them anyway, but thats not a concern in this case).

the solution is the 'offstack' syn.  chris came up with it, and it's pretty
clever.  all it does is when u exit 123, it hits an uparrow and then a ^pgdn
(which blows away that item), and finally an escape to clear the prompt
line....dave


Fm: Jim Butler 74766,1460
To: SysOp Chris Dunford 76703,2002

That does remind me of one seemingly recurring circumstance in the killing of
my syns (leaving poor ced whimpering but still alive).  I have a couple of syns
to invoke wordstar2000 to edit my ced.syn file and my autoexec.bat file, then
copy the edited file to the "master file" I keep on the shelf.  In other words,
ced.002 is my fully loaded tsr version, ced.dv is a stripped version for use
after desqview, ced.rb is an intermediate version I use with rbase sessions,
etc.  So I edit the current ced.syn or autoexec.bat, but then copy the edited
version back to the master from which it came (clear?).  Here are the syns;

syn edal ^c:^w c:\ced.syn^co c:\ced.syn c:\ced.002^newal^cls
syn eddo ^w c:\do.pro^cls
syn edex ^w c:\autoexec.bat^co c:\autoexec.bat c:\autoexec.002

hmmmm, I think I found *this* problem, but will share it with other users. I
was just going to give you my syn for "newal", but when I went to cut and
paste it here, I realized that I was using CED language instead of PCED
language. My old syn was:

syn newal ced clear syn^ced -fced.syn

Although I have not tested it yet, I have now changed it to:

syn newal ced clear syn^c:\ced load c:\ced.syn

.....but I do not think this is the only sequence that has killed my syns ....



@* EDITING CONFIGURATION FILE

Fm: dave rothman 70240,372
To: Steven Stern 70327,135

u might consider this approach which automatically reloads after u edit your
ced file:

syn     ce              'pm c:\sys3\ced.cmd^newced' syn     newced
'ced clear syn^ced load c:\sys3\ced.cmd'


Fm: Frank Markus 74415,1076
To: Steven Stern 70327,135

I use a different CED SYN to use KEDIT modify my CED configuration file which I
have renamed to CFG.CED.  The two KEY commands first clear and then reset my
SuperKey environments.  The PAL-KED and PAL-NORM are the names of other CED
SYNs that use KCSETPAL to set the colors for my EGA.

SYN CFG KEY 0 /ml^PAL-KED^C:\KEDIT\KEDIT CFG.CED^KEY DOS2 /ml^PAL-NORM

     Stripped to it's essence, my SYN is:
SYN CFG C:\KEDIT\KEDIT CFG.CED
which is nothing if not very very simple.  I use a SuperKey macro to reload
PCED with the new CFG.CED file so that I don't have to reboot.  I am not sure
whether this can be done in regular CED.  If it isn't you have still another
reason to get PCED.  That macro is:
CED LOAD C:\UTIL\CFG.CED<ENTER> <ENDDEF>


Fm: dave rothman 70240,372
To: Frank Markus 74415,1076

i messed up the last time i uploaded this cuz i dorgot to
unformat it, but here's the way to accomplish what u described:

syn     ce              'e c:\sys3\ced.cmd^newced'
syn     newced          'ced clear syn^ced load c:\sys3\ced.cmd'

if u dont have pced, then u dont use 'load' but '-f'


Fm: Frank Markus 74415,1076
To: dave rothman 70240,372

     Dave, your CED "newced" SYN inspired me to elaborate my "CFG" SYN and to
get rid of SuperKey in order to leave more room for KEDIT to work in.  My new
"CFG" SYN uses KEDIT to work on my CFG.CED file and then clears and reloads the
SYN file used by CED by calling a new SYN called CEDLOAD.
SYN CEDLOAD CED CLEAR SYN^CED LOAD C:\UTIL\CFG.CED SYN CFG
PAL-KED^C:\KEDIT\KEDIT CFG.CED^PAL-NORM^CEDLOAD^CO
The syntax used by CEDLOAD is correct for PCED; with minor alteration, it works
with regular CED too.

I was rather amazed that CED can use its SYN file to destroy and then
regenerate itself.  But it can.  Far from the only amazing thing in CED or
PCED.  But I will restrain myself until PCED is oficially released...RSN.


Fm: Dave Hoagland 72365,42
To: Frank Markus 74415,1076

Sure would be nice if you two had the necessary skills to work with standard
CED, so you could come up to our level and work without the additional crutches
provided by PCED.  The unchallenging stuff you're doing gets pretty boring.
For those who can manage to work with standard CED, I offer the following
example (which has survived the test of several months of use).

syn cededit kedit ced.cfg^ced clear syn^ced -fced.syn

Super complex.  Add your own paths and stir well. <grin>


@* PROMPTS

Fm: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317
To: All

I have discovered one of the interesting features of PCED, namely the ability
to establish a specific location on the screen as the command input line.  The
following prompt commands establish line 24 as the prompt display line and line
25 as the command input line.  The reason for selecting these two lines is that
I can do directory scrolls and then recall prior screens with Fansi-console
without having the prompt line overlay one or more lines of scrolled text as it
does with the prompt at the top of the screen.  The following lines are the
last two in my autoexec.bat file.  Please note that the prompt line has been
wrapped into two lines for message transmission and will need to be made into a
single line again before it will operate properly.

PROMPT $e[s$e[24;H$e[K$e[1;33;44m[$P]$e[0;36;40m  It is
$e[1;33;44m$t$h$h$h$h$h$h$e[0;36;40m on $d$_ $e[K$e[u
KEYFAKE 'ced prompt ">" 25 1' 13 'cls' 13
Many thanks, Chris.


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317 (X)

One question, tho: why use KEYFAKE to execute the CED PROMPT command?  You can
put PCED commands in batch files now...that's one of the things you paid for
<grin>.

While we're at it, why KEYFAKE instead of KEYIN?  KEYIN is faster cuz it
doesn't have to be reloaded every time you run it, and it doesn't have to
search thru memory to find its previous incarnation...


Fm: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317
To: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002 (X)

I am using Keyfake instead of Keyin for three reasons- less ram (640 vs. 1072),
it passes characters to SK after SK is invoked, and it passes characters to
1-2-3 after 1-2-3 is loaded.  The first reason is not significant, but the
latter two are.
You're right I don't need Keyfake to load the ced prompt statement, the
following commands work even better:
xced ced prompt ">" 25 1
cls
where xced is xced2.


Fm: Earle Robinson 70135,141
To: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317

I think that you are making the same mistake that I first did with keyin:
putting spaces between the control characters you are sending.  Keyin can pass
characters to sk.


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317 (X)

Hmm, I must be missing something here...why do you even need xced?  The simple
"ced prompt etc" should work fine in a batch.  Only thing you need xced for in
batches is synonyms.  Commands work fine (and won't reload the program, as is
the case with the free CED).

Wasn't aware that KEYIN wouldn't pass keystrokes to SK, will have to check into
that.


Fm: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317
To: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002 (X)

When I first tried it I tried using ced prompt etc without success.  Nothing
happened, the ced prompt character never appeared and the command line wasn't
in a fixed location.  So then I tried Keyfake and all was fine.  After your
suggestion tonight I used the xced ced prompt sequence and that worked.  I just
found out what caused my initial use to fail.
ced prompt ">" 25 1   -- works
ced prompt '>' 25 1   -- doesn't work and was used in the initial setup
Any thoughts?


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317

Aha!  I know what the problem is: it's your ">" prompt character.  If you have
the line

    CED PROMPT '>' 25 1

in a batch file, DOS is gonna take that > as redirection and strip the >' 25 1
from the command.  However, DOS does perform some special handling with double
quotes: it assumes that what's "inside" is to be taken literally, so PROMPT
"==>" 25 1 is not considered redirection.

BTW, I also have a '>' in my prompt, but I have the PROMPT command in my PCED
configuration file, along with my synonyms et al.  No problem with redirection
there, of course.


Fm: David Morgenlender 75206,1070
To: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002 (X)

Ted's prompt looked interesting, so I tried it. It looked good, but my
system started to act very strangely - e.g. sometimes it requested the prompt
at top of screen, sometimes at the bottom. I think it also did other strange
things, but  I can't recall for sure.  Then I tried to TYPE a file - the system
hung - required turning the system off & on.  BTW, I used:

  CED PROMPT ...
  CLS
BTW, I now remember the other problem - it forgot my SYN's when I gave the
PROMPT command.  It would not let me LOAD SYN's at that point.


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: David Morgenlender 75206,1070

David - pretty strange stuff.  Are you sure you typed the PCED prompt string
correctly?  Should be something like

    ced prompt ">" 25 1

As Ted and I have been discussing, it's important to use "" and not '' to get
it right.  Never seen anything like the problem you experienced.



@* KEYIN and 1-2-3

Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317

Ted - I can't find any differences between KEYIN and KEYFAKE in use with
Sidekick and 123.  Both work with SK; neither works with 123.

Now, I know what you're gonna say: yes, KEYFAKE *does* work with 123. I know it
must, cuz you say so, and so does rothman.  But, neither KEYFAKE nor KEYIN will
feed data to my copy of 123 ver 1A.

Tracing a little 123 code indicates that it "throws away" any data that is
already in the keyboard buffer at the time it loads (so that you have to press
a key to get rid of the logo).  Tracing with both KEYIN and KEYFAKE indicates
that any data entered via either one is discarded by 123 when it boots.  Are
you doing something different?  Do you have a different version?  Have you
patched out the logo or in some other way changed the 123 startup code?

Incidentally, PMAP indicates that KEYIN uses 960 bytes of RAM vs. KEYFAKE's
816.


Fm: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317
To: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002 (X)

        Chris, I tried the following Syn and couldn't get it to work.
Syn yy  'keyin #060^kick'
which should activate SK and callup the Notepad, but all I get is the main SK
menu.
        Try the following Keyfake command sequence on your copy of 1-2-3.
keyfake 0 13 0 13 0 13 '/fr'
I know that 1-2-3 throws away the initial buffer data, but the 0 13 sequence in
Keyfake apparently gets throught that and delivers the /fr to 1-2-3.  I did try
the same sequence with keyin, but it didn't work for me.    I have patched my
version 1A* to bypass the logo.  Do you want the patch?
        My Mapmem reports 688 for Keyfake and 880 for Keyin.


Fm: JAMES BACH 76555,273
To: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002

On the outside chance noone has pointed out the relevant passage from the
Key-Fake docs concerning its handling of 1-2-3, here goes:
====================================================
Some programs, like Lotus's 1-2-3, clear out the keyboard buffer when they
load.  This would ordinarily be a problem with KEY-FAKE, but KEY-FAKE has it
licked.  When the digit 0 appears in a KEY-FAKE parameter, it takes on special
meaning.  If a pro- gram checks to see if any keys are waiting, KEY-FAKE will
say "No."  The program thinks that no keys are available and the buf- fer is
clear.  When the program checks again, KEY-FAKE ;says "Yes" and delivers the
next keystroke.
Since virtually every time I enter 1-2-3, I do a File Re- trieve command, I
have a batch file called L.BAT to load Lotus in a hurry:
----
CD \LOTUS
KEY-FAKE 0 13 0 13 0 13 0 13 0 13 "/FR"
LOTUS
----
Make sure you have the system disk in drive A: before you run this one.  The
string of 0s and 13s was developed emperically, but it works well, skipping
past the Lotus Access System Menu right into 1-2-3 ready for me to select a
file.  Use KEY-FAKE and you'll have to be really quick if you want to read that
copyright notice one more time.
=========================================================
Mind you, I'm just quoting from key-fake.prn; I haven't even gotten to Keyin
yet.  I intend to scour your manual BEFORE asking you any questions -- for a
change!


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: JAMES BACH 76555,273

Thanks.  I have a hunch that 123 is one of the very few places where the "0 13
0 13" business would work, since it assumes rather peculiar behavior on the
part of the program.  But, I guess its necessary, if only for Lotus.



@* PARSING OF VARIABLES

Fm: Earle Robinson 70135,141
To: Chris Dunford 76703,2002 (X)

Interesting 'feature' of pced.  I had the following synonym defined to test
something for my imminent trip to europe at the end of the month:

syn tryit 'wait 07:00:00^call cis24^sqpc cis&m&d.cis'

I invoked tryit last evening, before midnight.  Cis24 called compuserve to
download messages as it should have at 7 am this morning.  Pro-yam created
'cis0311.cis' (using yam's internal method of using the current day & month).
However, to my surprise, the file which was squeezed was 'cis0310.cis' and not
'cis0311.cis'.  Obviously, pced had parsed the whole definition immediately,
and assigned the day at that time (before midnight).  I can't call this a bug,
but I am still somewhat chagrined.


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: Earle Robinson 70135,141 (X)

Hmm, no that's as designed.  Has to be that way, else synonyms like:

        syn foo 'cd \boo^do^cd &p'

wouldn't return you to your original directory.  All &vars are parsed at the
time the synonym is executed.  One thing you can do is to put the time in a
second synonym.  Try this:

        syn test1 'echo &h:&t:&s^pause^test2'
        syn test2 'echo &h:&t:&s'

You'll see that the two times are different.


Fm: Earle Robinson 70135,141
To: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002 (X)

Using a second synonym as you suggested is indeed the solution.  I hadn't
thought of it.  Thank you very much.  I should point out this parsing situation
in the next edition of the manual, including the solution of the second
synonym.


Fm: Bela Lubkin/Amiga Forum 76703,3015
To: Earle Robinson 70135,141

I believe the parsing situation >is< documented in the manual, as I remember
reading about this consequence and thinking to myself, "that will make some
things more difficult".  Ah, there it is: see page 4-32 of the manual: "All
predefined variables are expanded simultaneously, when the command is typed in,
or when a synonym is processed."; the example given is similar to the one that
Chris gave online.


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: Bela Lubkin/Amiga Forum 76703,3015 (X)

It seemed to me that the "early" expansion created more possibilities. If the
predefined variables were expanded only when they were actually used, things
like "syn 123 'cd \lotus^lotus^cd &p'" wouldn't do any good, and there wouldn't
be any easy way around it.  On the other hand, there *is* an easy way to do
what Earle wants to do...


Fm: Bela Lubkin/Amiga Forum 76703,3015
To: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002 (X)

You're right, definitely.  The only weakness is that you should document the
trick of using a second SYN to defer processing of & parameters.  Put that in
right with the discussion of & params, and they're twice as useful.  You done
it right, as usual...



@* ECHO OFF

Fm: SysOp Conrad Kageyama 76703,1010
To: Chris Dunford, 76703,2002 (X)

Chris...  while I was completely re-doing my SYN file to take advantage of the
new power of PCED, I suddenly realized why I didn't use CED for all of my batch
files....  the screen echo...  I have ECHO defaulted to off via a patch to
COMMAND.COM, and a lot of my batch files have a little message that displays
while things are being loaded/unloaded...  Is there any way to make PCED *not*
send the commands to the screen, ala ECHO OFF???  I put an ECHO OFF in a SYN,
and all it did was to turn off the C> prompt at the conclusion of the SYN...


Fm: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317
To: SysOp Conrad Kageyama 76703,1010

The following technique will work with programs that you don't intend to
temporarily exit to DOS from.
Syn  tk   'prompt $e[8m^cd \ie^tk^cd \^pmt'
Syn  pmt  'prompt $e[2J^prompt $e[s$e[24;H$e[K$e[1;33;44m[$P]$e[0;36;40m  It is
$e[1;33;44m$t$h$h$h$h$h$h$e[0;36;40m on $d$_$e[K$e[u^cls'


Fm: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002
To: SysOp Conrad Kageyama 76703,1010

No can do.  Remember, PCED merely passes commands as though they had been typed
at the keyboard.  DOS doesn't provide any way to suppress keyboard input at the
prompt, hence you can't do it in PCED either.

What you CAN do is to fool with the PROMPT.  You could, e.g., include something
in the front of each SYN that would store the cursor location, change
attributes to invisible (blue-on-blue or whatever); then run the rest of the
syn; finally restore the cursor posn and the true attributes. Ted's stuff may
be doing something like that.


Fm: T. B. Eyrick 72446,317
To: Chris Dunford (INF) 76703,2002 (X)

That's exactly what I'm doing, including resetting the Prompt to it's original
setting at the end of the Syn. For programs that allow you to temporarily exit
to DOS, such as Kedit, I have to first execute my pmt Syn in order to see the
screen display whenever I do a temporary exit, but it does work fine.  It's
just not something I'd recommend for newer or infrequent users.