[Freedos-devel] rere: About CABinet

[Eric A. <eric@CoLi.Uni-SB.DE>]

Hi, I like list/lister, too, but only some versions are shareware.
Other older versions are freeware. Still it is very nice that PG is
growing to be an replacement for the shareware versions. If anybody
wants to compare PG to 2 list/lister versions (to figure out if there
are any important features missing - I think arbitrary sideways scroll
would be good for PG): I have list and lister. Mail me for a copy.

LIST 1985 6.0, German version: CR/space: next page, X exit, Q/esc next file
(or exit; LIST only allows 1 filespec, but allows wildcards), T/home line 1,
B/end last line, D/+/down and U/-/up 1 line scrolling, S find text, F find
text case insensitive, A repeat search, W toggle line wrapping (!),
P toggle printer, 7/8 "wordstar" (more or less this is "ignore high bit"),
F1/? help F3 repeat search, F10 exit (called dos shell, but seems to exit),
ctrl-pgup / ctrl-pgdn as home / end, pgup/pgdown scroll 1 page, / find,
\ find case insensitive, ctrl-left jump to 1st column, alt-b/alt-f set color,
left/right scroll 20 columns left/right.

LISTER 6.1a 1987: Similar... F2/F4 and F5/F6 and F7/F8 cycle the colors of
find highlight, text and status line respectively (each 1 hotkey for fore-
and 1 hotkey for background), F3 repeat search forward F9 repeat search
backward (I prefer "?" and "/" for backward/forward search, and if you give
no search string, it is a repeat search: LESS does this), K "toggle type
ahead" (?), L/R scroll 20 columns left/right... many "as LIST 6.0" keys,
* "star filter" +/-/# "skip to line #" alt-letter is config, letters are:
a "toggle apx/dv/dd" (?), c "toggle list.com compatibility" e "toggle 43 line
mode" f "prompt for other file" g "goto dos" (seems to be no-op) h "toggle
hex dump mode" j "toggle junk filter" r "toggle ruler" s "toggle sharing"
(file open mode / share??) t "toggle tab expansion" w "freeze top window" (??)
x "exit, orig screen" (yet another quit key).

I think interesting things are the hex mode, tab expansion, line wrapping,
junk filter, strip top bit, ruler, 43 line mode, jump-to-line, searching,
scrolling (including sideways), wildcard filespec. PG already has much of that.

Now about CABinet shell: Okay, it already supports parameters :-). I once
wrote a simple mouse-shell where you could define a parameter or a "parameter
prefix" which would query the user to type the rest of the parameter. It had
no way to edit the menu except for using a text editor, and simply called
itself (small ;-)) recursively for sub-menus. Instead of a TSR mode you would
simply open a DOS shell from it. If you want a really powerful thing with a
DOS shell, you can even use a full (!) install of SETEDIT.sourceforge.net ...

PS: I do not think that wrong LIST linenumbers have to do with DOSEMU/Linux.

Eric.