Sunday   February 12, 1995

DataPerfect is such a good database, it is a shame the WordPerfect didn't see
fit to make DP mouseable. For all of you who have wished there was an easy way
to have your DP applications accept a mouse (without doing the programming that
DP was supposed to prevent), your solutions are here. The attached mouse menus
and linker are easy to use, and look professional. I'm not a mouse person
myself, use the keyboard. However, many clients like a mouse and wish to use
one, hence these files.

The file DP-MOUSE.ZIP contains the following files:

        AMENU.COM       Mouse TSR program
        DP23-A.MNU      Compiled menu - commands arranged like F-keys
        DP23-B.MNU      Compiled menu - commands grouped
        DP23-C.MNU      Compiled (no pop-up menu)
        README.TXT      This file

AMENU.COM is a linking TSR that activates the MNU file and ties it to your
loaded mouse program (ie:MOUSE.COM). This one came with my MS compatible mouse,
and seems to work OK. If your mouse came with a similar program you might want
to try your copy - mine is rather old, as you can see by the date. I've
included it, however, so you can see how a mouse would work with DP.

This mouse program should work on two and three buttons mice (though I only
tested it on two button rodents). On the three button variety the middle button
is disabled - but this will come back after the mouse menu is removed.

To work in DP, the mouse TSR and menu file must be loaded before DP starts. The
command to do so would follow the form of:

                        AMENU DP23-B

If your PC is short of environment space, you may have to increase said space
for this to work. In my case (use DOS 6.2) I have increased the space - but I
also have a bunch of other stuff going on to...... The command to increase the
space (in DOS 5 & 6.2) should be placed in the config.sys file, and looks like:

                        SHELL=c:\dos\command.com /e:2048 /p
        This looks to command.com located in my DOS directory and then
        increases the environment space to 2k. You would have to
        substitute the directory where your command.com is located,
        if different.

When enabled, mouse movement is translated to [SHIFT-TAB] (for moving to the
left, and up through the fields), and [ENTER] (for moving to the right, and
down through the fields). The left mouse button, pops up a menu, and the
right button functions as the [ENTER] key. The mouse action may change
depending on the screen appearance ie: in lookup/and panel report lists, left
/right movement is disabled; in menus all movement is disabled; ..... There are
three menu/mouse files, DP23-A, DP23-B, DP23-C. They differ only in menu layout.
DP23-A has a layout like that of the function keys, while DP23-B groups similar
commands together. DP23-C, allows mouse movement but has no pop-up mouse menu
(also the left mouse button issues the [CANCEL] command). Use what is most
convenient.

After leaving DP, the mouse program/menu should be removed. The command
to do this, would follow the form of:

                        AMENU OFF

Of course, it's easier to use a batch file to this (saves typing all those
commands). If you don't want the user's to see what's going on, you may want
to include the DOS NUL (redirect parameter) to disable the writing of AMENU's
messages to the screen.

Sample Batch file:
                        @echo off
                        cls
                        amenu dp23-B > nul

                        dp

                        amneu off > nul
                        cls




Hope you will find this useful. If you do, please share it with your friends
and fellow DataPerfect users/programmers. The menus and text are freeware
please copy and distribute freely.


Regards

Jim Balcom
Tantallon NS Canada
ac146@cfn.cs.dal.ca
nstn2025@fox.nstn.ns.ca