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Number   :  691
Date     :  2001-09-11
Author   :  Dwayne Reid
Subject  :  =?iso-8859-1?Q?Re:__The__=A6_more_or_|_more_quirk?=
Size(KB) :  1


At 01:15 PM 9/2/01 -0500, Kan Yabumoto wrote:
>At 2001-09-02 11:03, you wrote:
> >I accept that /HELP is constrained and that there are many more useful
> >things to do for the future of XXCOPY than including a self-paging /HELP.
> >Smart help is great once you are using XXCOPY.

Kan - a great many programs use a self-paging help screen that is 
hard-coded to 25 line displays and work very effectively. They simply 
scroll down 23 lines at a time, with the bottom of the display having a 
line that says 'Press any key for more help'. It seems like that would be 
fairly easy to implement - have a meta character embedded in the help text 
that stops scrolling until any keypress is detected.

One concern that I have is that many of the old DOS programs that we are 
used to seeing are going to start disappearing since MS is determined to 
kill DOS off. It seems unreasonable to expect a rank novice to be able to 
dig up something as obscure as MORE.COM just so they can read the help 
screen that otherwise flashes by too quickly for them to see. By the same 
token, that same novice probably doesn't know how to re-direct the output 
from the screen into a text file.

Just a suggestion from an old time DOS person who has spent much time 
teaching novices how to work with DOS and other command line utilities.

dwayne



Dwayne Reid 
Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA
(780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax

Celebrating 17 years of Engineering Innovation (1984 - 2001)

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