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1988-07-20
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26KB
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886 lines
BATMAN
(BATch job MANager)
A Tool For Adding Pizazz To Batch Files
Version 1.1
Presented to the public by: GS Communications
PO Box 5962
Titusville, FL 32783
First, the copyright and disclaimers;
* BATMAN is the property of GS Communications with authoring rights by
Guy Smith. GS Communications reserves all rights and privileges
afforded by copyright statues.
* BATMAN is released to the public as a Shareware offering. This means
you may use the program as you like with no restrictions. The author
asks that you make a one dollar contribution if you receive any
benefit from the program at all.
* Business concerns, and this includes sole proprietorships,
partnerships, corporations, nonprofit organizations, government agencies,
and cartels must pay a one time, five dollar site licensing fee.
* GS Communications offers a cash reward for evidence of business
concerns that use BATMAN, or any other software produced by GS
Communications, without paying the requisite fee.
* GS Communications and Guy Smith waive all responsibility for the
usefulness of the product or any damage it may inadvertently cause
(though it is a clean as clean can be).
2
Just What In The Heck Is BATMAN Anyhow:
BATMAN is a comic book character that achieved zenith popularity
during the run of a network television show of the same name
which aired during the 1960's.
But that's irrelevant. This program, BATMAN, is a tool for
bringing a little life an pizazz to your MS-DOS batch files. The
program allows you to do a number of tricks which are either
1) impossible to with conventual MS-DOS commands
2) require cryptic ASNI code to produce or
3) would otherwise require a bunch of separate utilities
I'll get into more detail in a moment. For now we can say that
BATMAN will allow you to;
* Make the speaker beep for any number of times, at any tone
and with any duration of tone and gap between the tones
* Play 'canned' songs and interesting sound effects
* Switch to any video mode (this saves floppy disc users
from having to have the MODE program on every disc).
Support is included for 43 lines on EGA systems and 50
lines on VGAs.
* Get responses from users and thus allows the batch file to
react to their answers
* Set foreground and background colors for text
* Write text at any position on the screen
* Solicit "Yes or no" response with many variations.
* Draw boxes with border for putting detail text into
* And many other stunts
3
NEW AND IMPROVED:
I have made a number of improvement since 1.0. Briefly they are;
1) The YORN command doesn't make a mess of the screen any more.
Originally it produced an error message which, if the user made
too many mistakes, would cause the screen to scroll away. Now an
error window opens, tells the user to try a "yes or no" type
answer, and then disappears with the first keystroke. I have used
a set text attribute for the error box (red background, black
foreground), which may interfere with your choice. Later I'll
write in a test of colors and change them dynamically.
2) New commands which clear the screen (an oversight in the first
version), draw a box and report the current video mode.
3) New sound effects/songs up to five from three (there should be
more, but I've been busy).
4) Process BATMAN commands from a file for faster response.
Sound good? Well flip the page and I'll start describing the
program.
4
How Do You Use BATMAN:
Well, first you use the Bat Telephone, dial 1-800-BAT-CAVE . . .
I'm sorry about these silly outburst, but this is a silly day.
Besides, the name of the program makes for obvious jokes.
To run BATMAN, simply type BATMAN followed by one of the
supported parameters. Since BATMAN is designed for use in batch
files, you will probably want to experiment by building your own.
In this package, there is a batch file named DEMO.BAT which shows
off some of the features of BATMAN.
Each of the parameters is a command name which can be abbreviated
to three letters (it was four in version 1.0, but I found a good reason
to decrease the character count). For example, the following two
commands function identically;
BATMAN VIDEOMODE(CO80)
BATMAN VIDE(CO80)
You can use more than three letters if you like. The only
restriction is that the first four characters must match a
command name exactly. You could say;
BATMAN VIDEO_MODE_HAS_POWER(CO80)
without making the program bomb. As you may note, the VIDEO
command has a parameter all its own, which is encased in
parenthesis. Most commands have such a parameters, some have
several, and a few have none at all. Don't let this bother you.
If you ever forget how to structure a parameter, just type in
BATMAN with no commands (or with the HELP command) and a short
list of commands and parameters will be displayed.
You can combine commands on a single line. This is advised since
each command line that calls BATMAN causes the computer to hunt
down the program, allocate memory, load and initialize the
program, and more time consuming processes. This new version also
allows you to use an entire file of BATMAN commands which makes the
process even faster. The only time you need to exit BATMAN is when a
batch file decision is required (i.e. the IF statement).
Finally, I suggest you keep BATMAN in the first directory in your
path statement (this section really only applies to hard disc
users, so floppy folks can read on). My \UTIL directory is first
in the path list and I keep BATMAN at the top of the directory
(there are a number of utilities that allow you to shuffle the
order in which files appear in a subdirectory). This speeds up
batch file execution greatly and saves some wear and tear on the
drive.
5
Some much for the basics. Flip the page and we'll learn about
each of the parameters.
BEEP(num,dur,frq,gap)
This command produces beeps of a specific tone, duration and
delay (i.e. no sound at all) between beeps.
num: The number of beeps you want to hear.
dur: The length of the beep in milliseconds.
frq: The frequency, or tone of the beep.
gap: The delay between beeps.
Use numbers only. Using character will produce an error message
(try it, you'll be surprised). You can use negative numbers, but
the program ignores the negative value, and uses the absolute
value. The commas are the only delimiters allowed in BATMAN. The
command;
BATMAN BEEP(3,500,440,250)
produces three beeps. Each beep is 1/2 second long and is played
at 440 Hz (or middle A). Silence is heard for 1/4 second between
each beep.
I decided to leave the parameters as numbers instead of devising
some coding scheme. This saves program size and processing speed
and makes BATMAN run faster. Since BATMAN