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Documentation for 4DOSMENU version 1.1 22-Nov-91
Copyright (C) 1991 Ted Harper
Free distribution and use of BTM code and associated data files for
_non-commercial_ purposes expressly permitted. This means that you can
change them around all you like for your own purposes, but may NOT
incorporate them in a commercial product, or charge for the
customisation or installation of the menu system, or render the code in
a commercially-sold book or other work (whether in original or modified
form).
The program is _not_ guaranteed to do anything at all, except take up
disk space. If it works, then I am happy for you; if you break it, you
have both pieces!
Introduction
------------
4DOSMENU was written as an answer to the plethora of menuing systems
which are available for MS-DOS systems. I don't see why anyone should
pay good money for something which can be whipped-up in a few hours. As
a byproduct, 4DOSMENU is a good demonstration of what can be written
using only 4DOS built-in commands.
The program requires 4DOS - a shareware replacement for MS-DOS's
COMMAND.COM written by J.P. Software - version 4.0 or later. If you do
not have this, it is available from most bulletin board systems, or
wherever you obtained this program. 4DOSMENU has been tested on a 386
with a VGA screen running MS-DOS 5.00 with 4DOS 4.00; I have no idea how
it performs on other systems.
A feature of 4DOSMENU is that different application menus may be
presented to different "levels" of users. For example, you may want to
allow everyone access to your word processing and spreadsheet programs,
but not to your Pascal or C compilers. This division by access level is
easily modified by changing a simple text file (not even the BTM
itself).
A total of 62 different access levels are available, as numbers and
upper and lower case alphas are used. The heirarchy used is
[0(highest)..9,A..Z,a..z(lowest)]. A user at any given level can select
options for their access level and those for all lower levels.
Installing and Running 4DOSMENU
-------------------------------
Copy the contents of the distribution archive into a directory (C:\ is
probably as good a place as any). A couple of changes will need to be
made to 4DOSMENU.BTM before you can run it :
- Change the value of "curdir" to the directory where
4DOSMENU.BTM and FULLMENU.TXT have been put.
- Change the value of "drivelist" to list the hard, floppy
and virtual (RAMdisk) drives you have on your machine,
whether locally connected, or accessible through a LAN.
Run 4DOSMENU from the command line by entering :
C:\>4DOSMENU 0<enter>
You should see system information and my sample application menu appear.
Try using some different values for the user access level (replace the
zero on the command line with E, P, R and z) to see the different menus
users on my PC get.
To select menu choices, you move the cursor with the arrow keys, then
hit <enter> on the choice you want. Probably the only options which will
work "straight out of the box" are REFRESH and DOS - selecting anything
else will probably result in an error message of some sort. The
following section explains how to set 4DOSMENU up for your particular
applications.
Customising 4DOSMENU
--------------------
Clearly, there is very little chance that many of the supplied menu
commands will actually _work_ on systems other than mine <grin>. To
modify the menu choices and actions, you need to do the following.
The FULLMENU.TXT file contains one line for each possible menu choice.
The format of each line is as follows :-
L APPLNAME - Sensible description of the application
Where "L" is the minimum access level required to be able to use the
application, "APPLNAME" is a meaningful short name for the application
(_one_word_) of 8 characters or less in length, and the description that
follows the "-" can be anything you like (up to about 35 characters).
For each APPLNAME specified in FULLMENU.TXT, there _must_ be a
corresponding label in 4DOSMENU.BTM, followed by the code to actually
run the application, then a jump back to the top of the menu loop.
As an example, let's add an option to run the "QEdit" text editor. I
only want users of level "P" or higher to have access to this. For the
sake of the exercise, I'll assume the executable for Qedit is in
C:\QEDIT.
In the FULLMENU.TXT file (anywhere you like, but I normally keep things
alphabetical), enter the following line :
P QEDIT - Qedit text editor (v2.15)
In the 4DOSMENU.BTM file, in the part where the other applications are
run, enter the following block of BTM code :
:QEDIT
cdd c:\qedit
q
goto loopback
That's all there is to it! You can try this out by running 4DOSMENU P
(or any access level higher than P) and selecting the QEDIT option. The
editor should run, and when you quit from it, you should be returned
to 4DOSMENU.
Hints
-----
I always leave the "logoff", "park hard disk" and "refresh screen
display" options as needing the lowest possible access level ("z"), to
ensure everyone can get them. Functions which can seriously wipe you out
should be set to the highest possible access level ("0"). In between
these extremes, I only use three access levels :
R - "Regular" users (my wife and her friends, who only really
use the word processor)
P - "Privileged" users (other people who are allowed to use
other application programs and games)
E - "Expert" users (who have access to various compilers and
other things best tightly controlled)
To make the display come up more quickly, limit the drives which are
scanned by changing the "drivelist" variable to process only local
hard and virtual drives (omit floppy and network drives).
Payment, Support and Feedback
-----------------------------
I am not requesting monetary payment for usage of 4DOSMENU. I would,
however, appreciate some sort of acknowledgement and feedback from
people using the program. Here is what I'd like :-
Send me a postcard or photograph of a nice scene in your area, with a
brief note giving your name (and if you like EMail or "snail mail"
address) on the back. Comments and suggestions for improvements to the
program are welcomed. If you live near a ski resort, a pocket trail map
or mountain guide would be even more gladly received!
My address is : Ted Harper
P.O. Box 105
Baulkham Hills NSW 2153
AUSTRALIA
If at any time you have any suggestions for improving the operation of
4DOSMENU, or find a <wince shudder> bug, drop me a message either by snail
mail at the address above, or electronically at the bulletin board below
(I'm co-sysop there) :-
The Big Apple BBS
Sydney, Australia
GTNet 302/021
Phone +61 2 764-3410
24 hours / 7 days
Speeds 1200-9600(v32) / MNP 4 & 5
ted harper
22-Nov-91
Release History
---------------
1.0 17/11/91 Initial release.
1.1 22/11/91 Removed several non-standard aliases from BTM file.
Added several more choices to sample menu.