DOS ain't dead - A question about the new /J switch for TSRs

A question about the new /J switch for TSRs (Developers)

posted by ecm , Düsseldorf, Germany, 04.04.2023, 14:12

> > Don't know what you mean by "entry point" but I certainly don't want to
> > assign half a dozen switches just for the various options now provided
> for
> > /J. (And they aren't all memory-related.)
>
> What exactly is the commonality between the options associated with /J?
> They aren't all memory-related, but AFAICT the only relationship is that
> you don't have any other place to put them -- it seems to be a sort of
> "miscellaneous" category.

Yes, that's correct. They aren't important enough to warrant their own main switch each, but they are options I want to provide the user in case they need or want it. (For instance, PSP relocation already was possible to disable, but only by changing a build option.)

> It also seems like you're trying to organize it sort of in a menu-oriented
> scheme like you might do in a non-TSR program with an "Other" or
> "Miscellaneous" or "Tools" option as the top level. That's what I meant by
> an "entry point".

I suppose so, yes.

> As an example, in some of my TSR's I have options for the different types
> of "special" memory that can be used (Upper, EMS, or DPMS). I have options
> for each of those possibilities with a "Yes" or "No" switch. For example,
> I have /EMS:Yes, but I don't have a /Memory:EMS:Yes since I think that is
> unnecessarily redundant.

Sure.

> It also seems like your wanting to try and make all options be a single
> character and that's useful (mnemonics) but I've found it to be
> impractical. Even a relatively simple TSR can have too many options to
> come up with unique characters that make sense. I've found that I can't
> always have single-character options and need to use whole words.

That's why I'm using the /J switch to hide away all these options, which gives us another 26 (or 36) flags with just one main switch.

> I've also found that the TSRs are all so different from each other that
> trying to make a common set of switches really isn't practical, either. I
> think the only two options that are common to most of mine are /U (usually
> aliased as /Uninstall, /Remove, and /Out) and /? (usually aliased as /H,
> /Hlp, and /Help).

/? or /H is help for all my TSRs (hypothetically, they just show help for unsupported switches), while /U and /R (Uninstall/Remove), /N (install New), /O (only apply Options / show state, do not install), and /X= (set preferred multipleX number) are also shared among all of them. Switches like /S+/-, /L+/-, /A+/- are specific to some of the TSRs.

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l

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Complete thread:

A question about the new /J switch for TSRs - ecm, 01.04.2023, 09:09 (Developers)
- A question about the new /J switch for TSRs - bretjohn, 02.04.2023, 06:13
  - A question about the new /J switch for TSRs - ecm, 02.04.2023, 08:50
    - A question about the new /J switch for TSRs - bretjohn, 03.04.2023, 06:27
      - A question about the new /J switch for TSRs - ecm, 04.04.2023, 14:12