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From: spolsky-joel@cs.yale.edu (Joel Spolsky)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Size of DOS window
Message-ID: <26589@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 9 Oct 90 03:29:35 GMT
References: <69220003@hpl-opus.HP.COM>
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In article <69220003@hpl-opus.HP.COM> knotts@hpl-opus.HP.COM (Tom Knotts) writes:
| 
| I have learned how to run a DOS shell in a window by first creating
| a PIF file. Seems to work OK. The trouble is, that when I maximize the
| window, it fills the screen completely from left to right (actually it
| is slightly too big) but it only covers half the screen from top to
| bottom. Is there any way to increase the size of the window in the
| y-direction?  

Not when maximized, only in normal ("Restore"). There is no reason to
do this, anyway, because DOS programs can only show 25 lines, so I
don't know why you want a black band at the bottom of the window.
Waste of space. I like the way Microsoft did it, so that Maximize puts
you directly into 80 x 25 mode. In fact, if your DOS application tries
to switch into 43 or 50 line mode, Windows senses this and adjusts
the size of the window appropriately.

| Also, when the window is created, it is fairly small. I
| would like it to start bigger. I don't see any parameters in the PIF
| file to address this.

For some reason, the way Windows works is that all new windows are (by
default) created in decreasing size, so that if you created 5 new
windows, they would cascade. This turns out to be a pretty stupid
default behavior and only the program itself can override it.

Joel Spolsky
spolsky@cs.yale.edu                                     Silence = Death