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Text File | 1994-09-20 | 14KB | 306 lines

9 Customising MacDOS autoexec.bat MacDOS launches the batch program named autoexec.bat every time it starts. Therefore, autoexec.bat is effectively the MacDOS' preference file. In it you can: • Set your preferred date format with DATE. • Set a 12 or 24 hour clock with TIME. • Make your life a bit more dangerous with CONFIRM OFF. • Make file copies faster with VERIFY OFF. • Ensure that you do not overlook any error messages by forcing MacDOS to display an alert box whenever an error or warning condition occurs. For this purpose use the command ALARM ON. • Use PATH to tell MacDOS in which folders you keep your executable files (applications and batch programs). • Set your preferred command prompt with PROMPT. • SET the system variable DIRCMD to your preferred defaults for listing folders. • Assign your literal volume IDs with SUBSTVOL. • Use CALL to execute additional initialisation batch programs and to launch other Mac applications. • Use TYPE to display a text file containing reminders of things to do. • Store the MacDOS directory name into the global variable HOME by SETting it to %WHERE%. • Attach to your working folder with CHDIR. • ECHO to the screen a welcoming message. • Set up your abbreviations by SETting the variable ABBREV. • Change the size of the characters displayed in the console window by SETting the system variable FONTSIZE. • Change the character used for quoting long filenames by SETting the system variable QUOTE. • Change the file creator used for output text files by SETting the system variable CREATOR. • Decide to be notified of all incoming Apple Events by SETting the variable SHOWAE. Date You can change the system date with the command DATE. With the same command you can also choose the format for entering and displaying dates. For example, you can choose to use an American format for the dates by typing: date mm/dd/yy If you then change the system date with the command date 5/23/94 MacDOS will display the new date as: 05/23/94 Alternatively, you can compose your own date format: date yyyy;mmmm,dddd If you then change the system date with the command date 94;5,23 MacDOS will display the new date as: 1994;0005,0023 Time When you change the system time with the command TIME, you can at the same time choose between a 12 and a 24 hour clock format. You can also choose the separators used between the time fields. For example, if you set the system time with the command time 17.20.10 MacDOS will display times with a 24 hour clock and dots as separators. If you set the system time to midnight, MacDOS interprets the command as a request to change the clock format. This means that you cannot actually change the system time to midnight (you will have to wait at least one second !), but gives you the possibility of choosing the clock format without altering the current system time. Therefore, time 00:00:00a leaves the current time unchanged and switches to a 12 hour clock. Similarly, time 24:00:00 switches to a 24 hour clock without touching the system time. Alerts By default, MacDOS reports errors and warnings with a line of text. If you execute the command ALARM ON , MacDOS replaces the line of text with an alert box and waits for you to click on its OK button before continuing. ALARM OFF reverts the error and warning reporting to the default. With ALARM ON , you can execute complex batch programs without having to monitor their progress, because you know that MacDOS automatically suspends execution if it encounters a problem. Confirmation When you use the Finder to move files between folders, the Finder always asks for confirmation before overwriting existing files. Also when you empty the Trash you have to confirm it. By default, MacDOS does the same and prompts you for confirmation. This is particularly important when DELeting files, because MacDOS removes them from the system instead of copying them to the Trash. You can direct MacDOS not to ask for confirmation by executing CONFIRM OFF . You can then revert to the safer default with the command CONFIRM ON . It is a good and safe practice to disable confirmations only in special cases and for short periods of time. Be aware of the fact that if you disable confirmation within a batch program, it remains disabled after the batch has completed execution. It is therefore advisable to re-enable safeguards within the same batch file that disables them. Verification of File Copying By default, MacDOS verifies the correctness of all COPY and XCOPY operations. You can disable verification by executing VERIFY OFF. You can then revert back to the safer default with VERIFY ON . With VERIFY ON , MacDOS reads the copy and compares it with the original. Naturally, this slows down the whole operation. Nevertheless, it is advisable to put up with the little delay, especially when copying to floppies: only when the files are read back correctly you can be sure that they were written correctly. Prompt The command PROMPT tells MacDOS how to prompt you for a new command. Through PROMPT, you can request MacDOS to display special information like the current date and time, the specification of the current folder, the current volume ID, and the MacDOS version. PROMPT is in fact a command which is totally equivalent to the SETting of the system variable PROMPT. The only advantage of using the command instead of a straight SET is that the command performs a syntax check on the prompt string. Literal Volume IDs Instead of using straight volume reference numbers to identify volumes, you can use the command SUBSTVOL to define literal IDs. To a large extent, this is just a cosmetic change. Nevertheless, it can be of great help if you want to port batch programs originally developed for DOS. Abbreviations MacDOS supports an abbreviation mechanism that lets you type short words to insert long strings into the command line. To use this mechanism, you must: • Store your abbreviations into a file. • Tell MacDOS how to find the file. • Tell MacDOS what abbreviation you want to have expanded. Preparing an Abbreviation File With any text editor or word processor, create a file of type 'TEXT' and insert lines like: abbr this where abbr is the abbreviation and this is the string to be abbreviated. The rules governing the formatting are: • abbr must be at the beginning of a line. • this is delimited on the left by the first space or tab (ie. the first blank) which follows abbr, and on the right by a Carriage Return. Therefore, additional spaces or tabs between abbr and this will be considered to be part of this. Moreover, there can only be one abbreviation per line. • Only the first 199 characters of each line are interpreted. The rest of the line is ignored (ie. the string to be abbreviated is truncated). • Lines beginning with blanks or containing no blanks at all are ignored and can be freely used for commenting. Additionally, be also aware that: • Abbreviations are case sensitive (eg. 'Abc' is different from 'abc' and 'aBc'). • Redefinitions are ignored. Therefore, you will only be able to use the first definition with a particular abbr. • The size of abbreviation files is limited to approximately 32kByte after removing the comments (but before removing badly formatted or duplicate abbreviations). Telling MacDOS where the Abbreviation File is Set the global variable ABBREV to the full path which identifies the abbreviation file (without quoting it, because SET accepts all characters after the equal sign). If the abbreviation file is in a folder included in the PATH variable, you only need to set ABBREV to its filename. When MacDOS sees an assignment to ABBREV, it reads the file, stores the valid abbreviations in a block of dynamic memory, sorts them, and removes the duplicates. Expanding the Abbreviations To expand an abbreviation, type the abbr at the beginning of the command line or following a space. Then press shift- tab. MacDOS then replaces abbr with the corresponding this. If MacDOS does not find any matching abbr, it just ignores your request. If you type only some initial characters of abbr, MacDOS can still perform the replacement as long as it finds a single match in the abbreviation file. If MacDOS finds more than one matching abbreviation, it lists them all and re-prompts you. MacDOS also automatically extends your partial abbreviation if possible. Example In the file "1:\aFold\abbrev file" you stored the following lines: rain Rainbow Hill This line begins with a space. Therefore, it is a comment. The following line is empty. Still commenting... aaaa Silly abbreviation aaBc Ditto To activate the abbreviations, type the command: prompt>set abbrev=1:\aFold\abbrev file To see the active abbreviations, type a shift-tab immediately after the MacDOS prompt. You will see: aaBc "Ditto" aaaa "Silly abbreviation" rain " Rainbow Hill" If you now type (either at the beginning of the command line or after a space) aaBc followed by a shift-tab, MacDOS will replace it with the string Ditto. The same will happen if you only type aaB. If you type aa, MacDOS will display the two lines with the abbreviations aaaa and aaBc. Finally, if you type a single 'a' before typing shift-tab, MacDOS will extend it to 'aa' before typing the list of matching abbreviations. That is, MacDOS will recognise that all the abbreviations that match 'a' also match 'aa' and will therefore append the second 'a' to your partial abbreviation. Safe Hacks This section explains a couple of simple changes that you can safely make to MacDOS with ResEdit. Starting Up You can remove the initial splash screen (sigh!) by deleting or renumbering the 'PICT' resource number 129 (or 130 for black & white). Shutting Down When you execute the commands RESTART and SHUTDOWN, MacDOS displays a little picture with a farewell message. You can replace the corresponding 'PICT' resource number 131 with a picture of your liking. More Help You can add help messages by inserting resources of type 'TEXT'. When you type "help subject", MacDOS looks for a 'TEXT' resource named subject. Therefore, you only need to add the necessary text resource and MacDOS will pick it up. When you type "help ?", MacDOS lists the names of all resources of type 'TEXT' beginning with 128 and stopping when it finds the first missing number. Therefore, if you want to have the help items in alphabetical order, you will have to insert your resource in the appropriate place by "shifting down" the following ones. If you want to get help on any file, you only need to add to that file a resource of type 'TEXT' named "help". You will then be able to type "help file name". It will work irrespective of the file type. This is possible because MacDOS, before returning the error message "No help available", looks for a file with the requested name and checks whether it contains a 'TEXT' resource named "help". Changing Fonts When displaying characters in 9 and 12 points, MacDOS uses a modified version of Monaco with redefined zeroes and capital 'i's. The bitmapped fonts are stored in two resources of type 'FONT'. You can replace them with different fonts, but MacDOS will only maintain proper formatting if they are monospaced.