Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!bloom-beacon!oberon!pollux.usc.edu!papa
From: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: FULLY INTERACTIVE SCRIPTS (A Tutorial)
Message-ID: <9066@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 13 May 88 16:36:35 GMT
References: <8922@oberon.USC.EDU> <9927@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: news@oberon.USC.EDU
Reply-To: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Organization: Felsina Software, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 48

In article <9927@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> pete@violet.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Pete Goodeve) writes:
>[Marco Papa writes (in <8922@oberon.USC.EDU>) about his program "getline"
>to be used with XICON...]
>Yeah!!  Many thanks, Marco!  I've been meaning to to write a "stupid little
>program" like that since I first wrote xicon, but somehow I never got to
>it.  As usual, the first person who REALLY needs it is the one who has
>to write it...

You are welcome!  By the way, another problem that cropped up, and that
I have to deal with, is that people will have either 1 or 2 disk drives,
and that makes a difference if the installation program is on a different
disk from the programs to install, as it is the case for A-Talk III.
If you've looked at the scripts, the startups EXPLICITLY mentions the entire
path <disk>:<dir>/<file>.  But on a single drive system that can be a LOT
of disk swaps.  One solution is to copy your required "install" files and
DOS commands to RAM:, CD to it and then do everything with the second disk
with the programs to install.

>Anyhow, it nicely fills the "Interaction Void" in that area.

Feel free to use it any way you like.  It did fill my "void".

>BTW, for my own scripts at least, I find that the sort of place where pipes
>can be very useful (rather than writing the input line to RAM:).  Of course
>you DO have to have pipes installed first!  Which makes the idea not so
>good for the installation scripts you were talking about.  (But when 1.3 is
>released, EVERYONE will use pipes, won't they? (:-))

I thought about that, but had to find a place that IN EVERY case would be
available to store the temporary files.  T: is not good since it might not
be there.  PIPE: would be good in 1.3, except that it MUST be mounted to be
usable, and I cannot assume that. It turns out that RAM: is always available
and if it isn't, it will be MADE.

>Marco also mentions the "various versions" of Xicon.  I think I can finally
>clarify that a bit, after I wrote to Gail Wellington at C-A about it, and
>got a friendly letter back.  Apparently both I and someone at C-A (unnamed)
>had the same idea, and picked the same (perhaps obvious) name for it, quite
>independently, so the program that is to be released on 1.3 is NOT mine.
>(I'm not sure why they never released it before, though...)

It was released in the installation disk for the A2090 hard disk controller.

-- Marco Papa 'Doc'
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