ANSIPLUS and the 4DOS Command Shell

The ANSIPLUS driver is compatible with the 4DOS and NDOS command shells. Three ANSIPLUS features are specifically adapted to 4DOS/NDOS:

• ANSIPLUS supports key stacking (for 4DOS 4.0+ and NDOS Version 7.0+), so the KSTACK.com TSR does not need to be loaded. When ANSIPLUS key stacking is enabled, ANSIPLUS emulates the 4DOS/NDOS Int 2Fh function D44Fh key stacking interface, so the 4DOS/NDOS KEYSTACK command will work, and loading the KSTACK.com driver will report that it is already installed.

  ANSIPLUS key stacking capacity is limited to the size of ANSIPLUS’s key buffer, which is configurable by INSTALL or NEWAPLUS up to 512 keys. ANSIPLUS key stacking can be disabled if KSTACK.com or KEYSTACK.sys is preferred.

• The SETCOLOR.exe utility program can be used as a replacement for the 4DOS or NDOS internal COLOR command, since SETCOLOR supports the syntax and all options of COLOR, plus many additional options. To do this, two commands should be added to AUTOEXEC.bat:

  SETDOS /I-COLOR
  ALIAS COLOR SETCOLOR

  Effective with 4DOS 5.5, color numbers are supported by the 4DOS internal COLOR command. The ANSIPLUS SETCOLOR.exe utility program has always supported color selection by number, but using a different numerical order. If compatibility with 4DOS’s color ordering is desired, the " /4DOS " command tail option should be added to the ALIAS:

  SETDOS /I-COLOR
  ALIAS COLOR SETCOLOR /4DOS

• At the 4DOS command prompt, when ANSIPLUS controls the mouse, clicking the middle mouse button (or both left and right buttons simultaneously) can be used to bring up the 4DOS popup history window. When the history window is showing, holding down the middle button will scroll up and down in the history. Clicking the left button will select the highlighted item, and clicking the right button will cancel the history selection.

One compatibility issue can arise for users who want to squeeze 4DOS output into a subscreen window: When a subscreen region has been defined by ANSIPLUS, 4DOS will not normally write colored directory or file names or other directly addressed screen output (eg., SCRPUT) to the correct locations in the subscreen region. This can be corrected by adding the following line to 4DOS.ini:

OutputBIOS=Yes

It is also probably best to let ANSIPLUS control the colors and VGA/EGA blink status in the command shell. Therefore, you should consider removing the following lines, if present, from 4DOS.ini or NDOS.ini:

BrightBG =

ANSIPLUS supports bright background colors by default, and turning bright background on or off in the command shell will override the ANSIPLUS setting.

StdColors =

These colors will override the startup colors defined by the NEWAPLUS utility program.

InputColors =

Use this only if you want to highlight input keys with a color other than the bright white provided by ANSIPLUS.

© Copyright 2000-2007, Kristofer Sweger. All rights reserved.	Rev. 10/16/07