[rs-users] RE: [Litestep] Built-in evars for xp/2k

[Mudiaga O. <ob...@in...>]

Here's some rant that started off as a reply
to someone on the Liststep Mailing list.
I thought I'd spare the litestep users.
But instead of deleting it, I thought
I'd share with the elite that are
interested in retrostep :-)

About the feature being in the next build, 
maduin thought the same and updated litestep immediately.
Man, I wish that guy would help retrostep in anyway if he can.


========================================

 > meself. I could add in the requisite
 > code and re-compile it myself, but I just don't want to go there 

This is actually the kind of thing that has no disadvantages and should
make it into the next update (but I am not an lsdev so don't listen to me).

 > - way too many versions of LS
 > floating about these days =) 

The good thing though is that it makes in necessary to
improve developer-developer-user relations and 
documentation ;-) If only other people thought so...

: Retrostep took too much of my head-space lately,
: but please allow me to steal this chance to talk about 
: it some more.

Aside from that I don't think purels has built-in variables yet.
Retrostep does. Infact, even the prerelease version defines 
"WinXP+" for windows versions after XP - that's rs for you.
But as Ender said on the purels list, "nobody is using retrostep"
yet, and like him, you can ignore it.

Ignore it especially if you never want to see it released.
Because without testing there's no way it will be labled
"ready for release". Retrostep does not intend to have 
56 unstable versions floating arround - it's few real 
users will probably use the same version until 
everybodys bugs have squashed. Then it should be marked 
for "release" and let loose.

Ingore it. But beware! Retrostep has the ambition of 
becoming "the standard". Yeah right! Like I have any 
influence on that happening... <grin>
It's up to the other steps to do things the way rs does them.
I will do things the way others do them except I think they 
either did something that's not needed (for example due to 
duplicate functionality), something plain silly, or if they
are not trying to make things work together.

Back to predifined variables, rs defines $winVerFull$ like this:
	
	// set friendly name
	ls_snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "Windows %s (%d.%d %s)", 
		winver, vi.dwMajorVersion, vi.dwMinorVersion, vi.szCSDVersion);
	ls_var_set("winVerFull", buf);

That should be available in about box so that user can just
copy and paste it - we'll thus have a standard way to "say"
what version of windows a user is running.

Talking about copying and pasting (again and again), 
a rs user can already copy and paste their operating 
system version, list of loaded modules, list of bang 
commands, list of defined variables, ...
(via Ctrl-C for now - context menu is a TODO)
all from the "about box" - I don't know if I'm even 
allowed to call it that... Screenshot of the beast 
is at http://rs.obada.com/screenshot-about.png


Silly mail, but hey, i'm only trying to write some 
documentation... maybe get possible contributors 
interested, and of course get others working harder 
in the process, more joy for all users! <hehe>