Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!m2c!wpi!jhallen
From: jhallen@wpi.wpi.edu (Joseph H Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Information Request: DOS equivalent of Script(Unix) or Photo(TOPS20)
Message-ID: <4750@wpi.wpi.edu>
Date: 14 Oct 89 02:40:00 GMT
References: <1323@cascade.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: jhallen@wpi.wpi.edu (Joseph H Allen)
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA. USA
Lines: 36

In article <1323@cascade.Stanford.EDU> faheem@cascade.Stanford.EDU (Faheem Akram) writes:
>I am very much interested in getting a program that works like Script
>or Photo and runs under the DOS.  For reference, Script and Photo allow

>I would also
>appreciate learning about any comments you might have about the programs (if
>they exist) that you recommend.

I recommend mine, log.com- I mailed you a uuencoded copy of it and I submitted
it to comp.binaries.ibm.pc in case anyone else is interested (It's public
domain).

I wrote this program just 2 days ago because I needed something to record
compiler error messages and see them on the screen at the same time.  Since
it works this way, I can abort the compiler (instead of having to wait all the
way through as some editors would have you) and put the error messages in an
other window in my editor (qedit).

This program was kind of a pain to write.  At first I thought I could trap all
the data sent to the bios screen routines.  Unfortunately ansi.sys scrolls the
screen itself- it doesn't use the bios scroll screen function.  Nansi.sys does
just the reverse- it uses bios to scroll the screen but it writes the
characters directly to the screen.  Next I thought that I might capture int 21
a get each of the console output functions- but I decided that would be very
gross.  Finally, I found the undocumented MS-DOS call through which all the
console output goes.  I guess we little people arn't priveledged enough to
know about all the good MS-DOS interrupts.

My program only records up to 50K of output- any more is truncated.  It would
be a real pain to make the program so that it did file output while in the
dos call since dos isn't reentrant.  To do that you'd probably have to have
the timer poll the routines to figure out when not in msdos-  But then you'd
have dead-lock problems...  Anyway, 50K should be more than enough.  And
besides, it's for free.

Joe