Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 02:49:57 +0200
From: Matthias Paul <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Subject: JP Software releases 4DOS 7.50 build 107 (beta)
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com, fd-dev AT topica DOT com, HPLX-L AT UCONNVM DOT UCONN DOT EDU
Message-id: <002601c33ab6$caa0caa0$c03dfea9@atlantis>
Organization: Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), Germany
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Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

Hi,

I thought some inhere might be interested in these news from JP Software's
support forum (http://www.jpsoft.com). New public (beta) versions of their
advanced command line processors are available and can be obtained here:

- 4DOS: ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/4dos/bet4d107.exe
        ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/4dos/bet4d107.zip
        ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/4dos/files

- 4NT:  ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/4nt/bet4n107.exe
        ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/4nt/bet4n107.zip
        ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/4nt/files

- TC32: ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/tcmd32/bettc107.exe
        ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/tcmd32/bettc107.zip
        ftp://jpsoft.com/beta/tcmd32/files

I recommend to download the .ZIP file version (at least in case of 4DOS),
because the Win32 installer incorporated into the self-extracting .EXE
archive isn't really useful under DOS. The files can still be extracted
manually using "PKUNZIP BET4D107.EXE", but you will end up with a lot
of files not necessary for a plain DOS or Windows 9x installation.

|Build 107 changes from the previous build include:
|--------------------------------------------------
|
|- Minor corrections in the help files.
|
|- 4NT / TC - added support for XP visual styles.
|
|- TC - worked around a Win32 problem when piping and redirecting
|       in the same command; i.e.:
|
|       dir | sort > file
|
|- Added a test for infinite loops in executable extension definitions.
|
|- %@OPTION (4NT, TC) - fixed a problem when displaying "choice"
|  directives (i.e., Yes/No, On/Off, etc.)
|
|- TAIL (4NT, TC) - added support for pipes.  (This is not ordinarily
|  doable in Windows because pipes can't be "rewound" -- so the pipe has
|  to be written to a temporary memory buffer and the TAIL taken from there.
|  Consequently, this limits the amount you can actually display in TAIL
|  (not the file size itself) to < 1Mb.)
|
|- TCTOOLBAR (TC) - now preserves leading & trailing whitespace in
|  the button label.

Monitoring them moving over to the Win32 world, this maybe one of the
last builds of 4DOS to come, so I suggest to grab it and report any
problems you find to them before it may be too late. Of course, whilst
this is labelled beta software, it can be considered very stable already.

And for the HP LX'lers among you: Yes, it runs just great on the HP
100LX/200LX/700LX and will convert the built-in old-fashioned DOS 5
command line into a most convenient power shop, while still maintaining
backward compatibility with traditional DOS commands and syntax.

Unrelated to the above recent JP Software products, but since according
to recent posts quite a few people inhere seem to still use and depend on
OS/2 (including me from time to time), a new free "special edition" of
4OS2 3.04C (previously developed by JP Software until about 2 years ago)
can be obtained from SciTech Software now:
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/enterprise/free_titles.html.

Greetings,

 Matthias

-- 
<mailto:Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>; <mailto:mpaul AT drdos DOT org>
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org

"Programs are poems for computers."